


Styx // redux

by Somnifery (somnifery)



Series: Alcione Redux [1]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Aftercare, Antagonistic Ghost (Destiny), Bad Sex, Bathing/Washing, Blood and Violence, Broken Bones, Cock Rings, Cunnilingus, Denial of Feelings, Doctor/Patient, Dreams and Nightmares, Explicit Consent, F/M, Gen, Gentle Kissing, Gentle Sex, Ghost (Destiny) - Freeform, Healing, Hive (Destiny) - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Intimacy, Kissing, Mars, Masturbation, Multiple Orgasms, Original Character(s), Outer Space, Post-Coital Cuddling, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Romance, Science Fiction, Sexual Inexperience, Sexual Tension, Showers, Sleeping Together, Sleepy Cuddles, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, The Last City (Destiny), The Red War (Destiny), Touch-Starved, Unsatisfying Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2020-03-19 22:59:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 59
Words: 42,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18980104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somnifery/pseuds/Somnifery
Summary: The Red Legion has taken the City, and the Light has gone. On Mars, a strike goes wrong as Ghosts go dark, and a grievously wounded Guardian is abandoned to the care of an Awoken medic who has been adrift since the Taken War.





	1. present day

The world seems so peaceful on days like today. 

Tamzin swings her legs over the edge of the Wall, chin resting on her arms, arms propped on the guardrail that keeps children and civilians from fatal falls. Accidental ones, at least. 

She watched a civilian jump last week. It was surreal to see a body fall into the clouds below, knowing they wouldn’t come back, that no Ghost was waiting to revive them. 

“Looks like rain,” Rho says. Her shell whirs as she watches those dark clouds building, the sort of black storm that brings the Arc lovers outside. “Fireteam request for you. Lochlan would like an assist.” 

“Tell him no,” Tamzin replies. “I don’t feel like going out today.” 

A pause. 

“Whoops.” Rho doesn’t sound even a little apologetic. “I accidentally pushed accept.” 

“You don’t have  _ hands _ ,” Tamzin snaps. “You can’t  _ push _ anything. Cancel it.” 

“I think you should--” Rho begins, but a voice cuts in, a voice that makes Tamzin cringe. 

“Awesome!” Lochlan is jogging up behind them, sliding to sit down right next to Tamzin. “I was hoping you’d say yes.” 

“Did you seriously send me an invitation when you were standing right behind me?” She doesn’t bother to keep the disdain out of her voice. 

“Of course!” The Hunter reaches out and ruffles her hair, grinning as she bats his arm away. “Gaelen was too intimidated to talk to you, and I was talking to that cute engineer.” 

“Well, I’m not going.” She smiles, the charming smile she uses when she’s about to ruin someone’s day. “Sorry. Ghost error.” 

“Are you sure?” Lochlan tilts his head. “Rho said you already filed the flight plan with the Vanguard and everything.” 

“Did she?” Tamzin’s voice is rather high-pitched, and Rho vanishes before she can turn to snarl at the Ghost. “I’m gonna scrap her.” 

“If you want to tell Ikora, I’m sure we can find someone else.” Loch smiles. He knows she’s cornered. “Up to you.” 

“I was going to take a hot bath, you know.” She flops back, lying flat on the concrete, arms outspread. “I was going to have a hot bath, and a strong drink, and read a book.” 

“Poor baby,” Loch says, hopping onto his feet. “See you in the hangar at 1800!” 

_ It will be fun, _ Rho says, safe and out of sight.  _ Try to relax and be social for once. _

“Fuck you,” Tamzin snaps, making a mechanic turn to give her a dirty look. “For being a rat  _ and _ a liar.” 

_ You’ll thank me. _ The Ghost sounds far too sure of herself.  _ You’ll have a great time. _

“I won’t,” she says. “I’ve decided I’m going to be miserable.” 

Her Ghost just sighs. 

Tamzin gets to her feet, casting one last longing look at the gathering storm. She wanted to feel the rain on her face tonight. 

“Get my shit together,” she tells Rho. “And get a warm coat out. I don’t feel like freezing to death on Mars.” 


	2. three months earlier

This was a mistake. 

Tamzin closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries not to let her nausea overpower her. She’s had too much to drink, too little to eat, too many hours breathing in gunpowder and ether. 

Loch shifts. Hits something that actually feels good. Derails her thoughts. 

“Fuck,” he moans. “Oh, fuck,  _ yes _ \--” 

The mistake. Right. This was the mistake. 

Letting her shaky hands and scattered thoughts get the better of her. Letting the lingering fear from their mission get under her skin. Letting Lochlan get up her proverbial skirt. 

It felt alright, she has to admit. The touching wasn’t so bad. The kissing was something like pleasant. Even having him undress her, rushed as he was, had made her feel good, made her think this sex thing might not be such a bad idea. 

Lochlan gasps, slamming into her, shuddering. 

She’s seen dogs humping sparrows with more finesse. The sparrows probably enjoyed it more.

She watches his face contort, his lips parting for a low, ragged moan as he jerks his hips a few more times. It’s strange, to watch his moment of bliss like this. Somehow, she’s causing that feeling, but she feels so detached from it all. A thousand miles away. 

“That was… amazing.” Lochlan pants. He’s running his hands down her sides, finding her breasts, bending down to kiss and suck at her nipples. “You felt so good, hotshot” 

Tamzin wonders what he’d do if she didn’t lie. Maybe he’d actually put in some effort. 

Or maybe this just isn't as nice as people make it out to be. 

She’d rather cut this short. Get rid of him. Get clean. Get to sleep in the safe, spacious confines of her own bed. 

“Don’t call me hotshot.” She pats his head, awkwardly. “Get off. I need to clean up.” 

He pulls out, and she feels his cum trailing out in his wake, sticky, repulsive on her thigh. She doesn’t want to think about changing the sheets. Doesn’t want anything but a hot shower, hot enough to burn. 

“Can I stay?” He asks, watching her walk away. “The night, I mean.” 

“No.” Tamzin slams the spigot to hot, flinching as the water sprays the back of her head. “Don’t forget your cloak on the way out.” 

She finishes the vodka in the shower, balancing the bottle as she shaves her legs, her pelvis, under her arms, until she feels slick and smooth and untouched, until the water is running ice cold on her face. 

“Change the sheets,” she slurs at Rho, stumbling out of the shower. “Or the couch.” 

“Already...” The Ghost trails off, watching Tamzin fall to the tiled floor with a crash. “... done.”

Tamzin starts dragging herself up with a hand on the sink. She’s dazed, bleeding, seemingly oblivious to the glass of the broken bottle on the floor. 

“Damn it, Tamzin.” Rho huffs, drifting down. “Stop. I’ll take care of it.” 

She does, of course. Rho always does. She puts her Guardian to bed. Puts her in a clean nightshirt. Finds her strange stuffed dog where it was shoved under the bed, and with a bit of finagling, carries it up, drops it onto Tamzin’s chest. 

“Go to sleep,” the Ghost says. “You’ll be fine in the morning.” 

Tamzin can’t hear her, of course. She’s already asleep, clutching that silly toy. 

Rho sighs and starts patching up her Guardian’s careless wounds. 


	3. three months earlier

If there were a god, she'd thank him for sparing her the suffering of hangovers. 

As it is, the sun is high in the sky when she wakes up, her head is clear, and she can remember every painful, awkward second of last night. 

"Watch your step," Rho says as she gets up. "Broken glass on the bathroom floor." 

"Seriously? You couldn't clean it up?" 

Rho ignores her, going off to do whatever Ghosts do in the morning. Tamzin grumbles, finding a magazine and a brush in a dusty corner, crouching down at the bathroom door. 

"I can't believe you," she complains aloud, seeing the dried smears of blood on the sink and floor. "Just leave the bathroom looking like a crime scene, I guess. Whatever." 

She can't help thinking while she sweeps, but she just comes to the same conclusion she did twelve hours ago: Last night was a mistake.  

It’s not that Lochlan’s a bad guy, she muses. It’s just that she doesn’t like him. 

If Tamzin were thinking out loud, Rho would interject and tell her that she doesn’t like anyone. 

She wouldn’t be wrong.

Tamzin sighs, sweeping the last of the glass onto a magazine, leaning to the side to see any shining shards she may have missed. She’ll find something later with her bare feet, she’s sure. 

“You need to get some bread,” Rho says as she walks into the kitchen. “And milk.” 

“Milk makes me sick,” Tamzin reminds her, dumping the glass into the bin. “And it always goes bad when I’m on missions.” 

“Juice, then. Some meat to freeze.” The Ghost moves aside as Tamzin goes to the refrigerator, digging through the tiny freezer for a bag of frozen vegetables. “You’re too thin. You need to eat more.” 

“Gotta stay light for all that floating around,” she replies dryly. “I eat enough. It’s not like I can starve to death.” 

Rho keeps talking, but Tamzin has gotten used to ignoring her by now. She scrolls through the display on her refrigerator door, making noises of assent every so often to placate her Ghost. 

As usual, it’s just the latest district news and drama. Some lady complaining about parking on the canal, and a man  _ very _ concerned about a playing card he found on his porch  

> >> _ What does this mean? Could this be marking my home for a crime? Is this a Warlock ritual of some sort?  _
> 
> _ >>> It’s a playing card. Some kid probably dropped it. Calm down, old man. _
> 
> _ >> I don’t appreciate you making light of this!!!  _

Her snort of laughter gives the game away, and Rho huffs in irritation. 

“I’ll get some groceries,” she says, waving Rho off. “And some playing cards, I think. Might as well have some fun while I’m in town.” 

“You’re always in town,” the Ghost points out. “You hardly go on missions.” 

“I was killed by Fallen a few times on Monday.” Tamzin shrugs, heading back toward her bedroom. “I think that merits some vacation time.” 

“Sleeping with that Hunter ate up your vacation time. Get back out there.”

“Did that seem like a vacation to you?” She grimaces, tugging her shirt over her head, digging through a pile of clothes with a frown. “I was thinking about how much better it felt to get shot in the head.” 

“That’s not funny.” Rho’s shell whirs. “It wouldn’t kill you to have a relationship, you know.” 

“I have plenty of relationships.” Tamzin sniffs a shirt before shaking it out and putting it on. “They’re just not friendly.”

“You need to take out the laundry,” Rho tries to intercept her, making an irate noise as Tamzin bumps her with the door. “You keep forgetting!” 

“I’m not forgetting it.” Tamzin locks the door behind her, slipping her feet into her sandals and taking a breath of cool valley air. “I’m just not going to do it today.” 

Rho materializes outside, checking the lock before turning to look for Tamzin. 

“You say that  _ every _ day,” she calls. 

Tamzin just turns on the landing and gives her Ghost a bright smile. 

“Good thing I’ll never run out of tomorrows.”

Before Rho can reply, the Warlock is jogging down the steps to the courtyard again, her hair a flash of fire in the midday sun. 


	4. zero hour

She misses a step, and she starts awake, gasping.. 

Everything is white, bright, blinding, pain and pressure and panic. 

“Hey,” someone says, loud, too loud, nearly drowned out by something beeping,  _ screaming _ . 

Blood. Blood on blue skin, blue eyes. 

A shadow across her. 

“Audio off.”  

Silence. 

Her own breathing. Her own pulse, erratic, fast. 

She can’t see out of her left eye. She can’t lift her hand to see what’s wrong. 

“Listen to me, Guardian. Focus on my voice.” 

She can feel hands inside of her. Feel torn flesh in her teeth. Hear the unpleasant squelch of her own blood, her own organs, shifting in the open air. 

“Rho,” she says,  _ tries _ to say, but it comes out ragged, slurred, an ugly moan of pain and fear. “Rho?” 

Her Ghost doesn’t come. 

There’s something on her face. A mask? 

Needle in her arm. Pain. Faint metallic clicks. 

“Can you breathe for me?” 

She can’t. She doesn’t think she can. 

She does. 

“There you go.”  

The air smells strange. Tastes strange. 

A fog. A dulling of sensation. 

“In,” the voice urges. “Breathe in.” 

She tries. Coughs. Moans in pain. 

Tastes copper. 

“Transfusion,” the voice says. Not to her. “Blood type, volume needed--”

A computer speaks. 

She inhales again. 

“Good girl.” 

A warm hand slips into hers. Covers her cold fingers.

_ Nine. Eight. Seven-- _

“You’re going to be okay.” 


	5. two months earlier

Gaelen flips the tablet over, screen hitting the table hard enough to make Loch flinch. 

“Dude,” the Titan begins, failing to keep the weariness out of his voice. “Saving the photo from her file is kinda creepy.” 

“What?” Loch reaches for his tablet, tone defensive. “She won’t reply to any of my messages. If we went out, I could get a real picture.”

“Maybe she wants you to take a hint.” He lets the weight of his hand keep the tablet in place, watching Loch try to extract it from beneath his hand. “What’s the big deal, anyways? She’s not that attractive, and she doesn’t have the personality to make up for it.” 

“She’s great in bed,” Lochlan replies. “And come on. Do your optics need tuning? She’s super hot.” 

“Maybe I just don’t like redheads.” He surrenders the tablet with a sigh, watching Loch pick it up and find his stolen photo once more. “I think you just want to snag a young chick. Get her hooked before they figure out how much better they could do.” 

“She’s not young.” That defensive tone again. “She’s been around.” 

“She was rezzed, what? Two years ago? One and a half? Has she even told you?” 

“She doesn’t like to talk, that’s all.” He shrugs. “And I don’t think her rezz date matters.”  

“She doesn’t like to talk to  _ you _ . She’s kind of a bitch, if you haven’t noticed.” Gaelen tilts his head back, closing his eyes. “And if the sex was that great, why hasn’t she called you back?” 

“It wasn’t great.” Loch’s Ghost moseys in from the lower deck of their ship. “She just lay there like a dead fish.” 

“You watched?” Gaelen’s lights brighten in amusement at this, and he sits up, leaning forward to look at Loch’s now-burning face. “No wonder she isn’t returning your messages.” 

“It was her first time,” he says, as if it’s an excuse. “If she’d just give me another shot--”

“Drop it, man.” Gaelen shakes his head. “I’m sure you can find some other Warlock to bang. Maybe a cute blond we can share.” 

“Yeah. I miss Vita.” Lochlan sighs, staring at his tablet again. “You sure she’s not your type? Maybe she’s into Exos…” 

“You’re hopeless.” Gaelen watches his friend’s fingers begin tapping something out. “Are you messaging her again?” 

“No,” Lochlan replies, moving the tablet out of Gaelen’s reach. “None of your business.” 

The Exo just sighs, hauling himself out of his seat and heading down into the hold. 


	6. one month earlier

“Delete it.” 

Tamzin turns, staring at herself in the full length mirror. There’s a few odd wrinkles where the coat meets her hips, and she tugs at them, trying to smooth them out. 

“Are you sure?” Rho ducks beneath her arm, pausing to examine a seam. “It’s too big.” 

“I’m certain.” Tamzin purses her lips, poking at the sleeve caps. “If I go down a size, it’s too small in the shoulders and I can’t move right.” 

“Well, I like the color. Brings out your eyes and doesn’t clash with your hair.” Rho bumps into her cheek, pushing her auburn bangs out of the way. “You should really talk to him.” 

“He should really take a hint.” She sighs. “I like it. Ask if they do tailoring, would you?” 

“Only if you give him another chance.” 

“You only say that because you’re friends with his Ghost.” Tamzin pushes Rho aside with one hand, sticking her head out of the curtained fitting room. “Excuse me, sir?” 

Rho is silent as the shopkeep comes in, pinning and marking the seams, gently directing Tamzin to lift her arms or turn, asking her if something is too tight or loose, humming and adjusting as she answers. 

“You’re impossible,” the Ghost finally says. “I wish you’d try to be nice.”

“Rho--” Tamzin sighs, apologizing for the movement, but the tailor is undoing the fastenings, helping her shrug the coat off. “ _ Xièxiè nǐ _ . I’ll be right out to pay.” 

“Don’t forget your scarf.” Rho moves aside to let the man leave. “Or your bag.”

“I won’t. Stop pressuring me to talk to Loch,” Tamzin retorts, grabbing the scarf a bit too roughly. “Delete all his messages, stop asking if I’m sure, and get over it.” 

Rho makes a disapproving noise. 

“I’m serious. Stop.” 

“You need to meet people! You need to go out. Do missions, of course, but be social! Enjoy yourself!” 

“I will when I feel like it. And it won’t be with him. Now shut up and get ready to transfer my glimmer.” 

Tamzin heaves her purse onto the counter, smiling at the shopkeeper.

“Sorry about that. How much do I owe you?” 


	7. present day

“Five thousand glimmer for completion. Seven hundred for travel expenses.” 

The hangar is always at a dull roar, bustling with mechanics and engineers and wayward Guardians, frames busily taking inventories, various Dead Orbit devotees shuffling around to get in everyone’s way. 

“It’s just a nest,” Rho continues, dodging a wayward cable. “Wizard, some Knights, a lot of Thrall. Exterminate and evaluate for any tech the city could use. Easy money.” 

“It better be.” Tamzin sidesteps a pool of oil, waving a hand at an empty bay as a controller asks where she’s embarking. “I just want to get this over with.” 

“Hey, babe!” 

She has to make an effort not to cringe at the sound of Lochlan’s voice, managing to hide her grimace before she turns around.

“Oh. Hey. Just getting my ship.” She forces a smile onto her face, taking a step back as he approaches. He just makes up the distance, taking her hand into his and pulling her close. 

“You could just ride with me,” he says, yanking her forward. Tamzin stumbles, and as he catches her, pulls her to his chest, she can feel the pressure of his groin between them. “I can put on autopilot, and show you how I like to pass the time.” 

A worker runs by, shouting, startling him, and she feels his grip loosen. She takes the chance to shove him back, finding her balance once there’s ample space between them. 

“No.” Tamzin doesn’t fake a smile this time. She wipes her hand on her coat, as if his touch had contaminated her. “I think I’ve made it clear that I don’t want that.” 

“What?” Lochlan’s face is a picture, shifting from confusion to shock to anger in a matter of moments. “What is that supposed to mean?” 

Gaelen has arrived, Tamzin notices. His green-light eyes are focused on the floor, and he seems to be hoping it will swallow him whole. 

She wishes it would swallow Loch, too. 

“It means I want you to stop... propositioning me.” Rho makes a noise, likely warning her to be gentle, or amused that she’s using her big words, but Tamzin can’t be bothered to react. “I don’t want to date you, and I don’t want to sleep with you again. Ever.” 

“Why the fuck did you accept the invitation, then?” His face is flushed with rage and embarrassment, his voice too loud for a private conversation. “Why would you come along if you didn’t want to hook up again?” 

Tamzin blinks, wondering if she somehow misheard him. 

“You invited me on a strike because you wanted to fuck me?” She says it slowly, drawing it out to make it clear how ridiculous it sounds. “You think the Vanguard schedules time for you to get laid on duty?” 

Lochlan sputters, stepping forward menacingly. Tamzin watches him lift a hand as if he’s about to grab her again. 

“Do it,” she says, giving him a dangerous smile. “I fucking dare you.” 

“It’s time to go,” Gaelen says, yanking Lochlan back by his cape. The Hunter stumbles, bewildered, and the Titan begins to tow him toward their own ship before he can recover. “Let’s all just take some time and calm down on our way there, alright? Alright.” 

Tamzin wants to tell him that she isn’t the one who needs to calm down, but Rho is already talking at her, aghast. 

“I can’t believe this. You should call this off! You should tell the Vanguard what he’s doing!”

“This was your idea,” Tamzin replies, voice flat. She’s turned her back on the men, striding toward her ship. “I was hoping he’d give me a reason to hit him. Transmat, please.” 

“You can’t be serious,” the Ghost says. “You can’t go on a mission with him after that.” 

“I want to kill something,” she says. “And I don’t want to file an incident report to explain why I backed out of a strike on the tarmac.” 

“You’re not going to kill him?” Rho sounds worried. “You can’t do that.” 

“What? No. I’ll just ruin his life when we get back. I’m not a snitch.” She snaps her fingers at Rho like she’s trying to summon a waiter. “Transmat. Now. Let’s go.” 

“Don’t  _ snap _ at me.” The Ghost huffs as she complies, waiting until Tamzin is settling into her seat to continue. “I’m not your maid.” 

“If I paid you, would you be less of a nag?” Tamzin chews on her lip as she goes over the control panels and monitors, skimming for any concerning readings. “All green. I’ll take it.” 

Rho makes an irate noise, but she settles back after a quick scan of her Guardian’s safety harness. 

“Tower, this is 5925, requesting clearance for takeoff.” 

“We could still stay home,” Rho fills the silence, channeling her voice into Tamzin’s feed. “Just cancel the request.” 

Tamzin hesitates.  

She almost does it. She almost powers down the ship. Almost asks for Rho to file the report. Almost--

“5925, this is ground control. You’re cleared for takeoff at Bay Twelve.”

_ You hardly go on missions. _

“You wanted me to go out more,” Tamzin says aloud. She focuses on the click of switches, the beep of the proximity detector as she detaches from the dock. 

_ Nine. Ten. Eleven.  _

“So let’s go out.” 


	8. one week earlier

Tamzin hooks her arm around the ladder, leaning out into the open air. For a moment, she thinks she’s misjudged the distance, but then her fingers catch the spine of the book. 

“Found it.” She smiles, turning it over to inspect the binding. “ _ Void Analysis. _ ” 

“You’re not here to borrow books,” Rho reminds her, darting an anxious glance toward the door. “She doesn’t call Guardians in to have friendly chats like this!” 

“How would you know?” Tamzin tucks the book back onto the shelf, skimming her fingers along the other spines, humming softly. “Oh, look!  _ Theories on the Role of Darkness in the Collapse _ . D’you think I could... ? 

“Since it’s a restricted title, I’m going to say no.” The Ghost sighs. “Tamzin, take it out of your pocket.” 

The Warlock wrinkles her nose at the Ghost. 

“What, are you going to rat me out?” 

“I won’t have to. She’s going to notice the hole on the shelf and know you were the last person in here alone.” 

The door opens, and Tamzin slides down the ladder, casual as can be. 

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” the Warlock Vanguard says. Her voice is as soothing as ever. “Something came up.” 

“It’s fine,” Tamzin replies. “I was just looking at your books.” 

Ikora gestures to a seat as she makes her way behind her desk. Tamzin takes it, hands folded neatly in her lap, trying not to fidget as she watches her superior pour hot water into a teapot and set it out on a trivet to steep. 

“I just wanted to check in,” Ikora says, settling into her seat. “See how you’ve been doing.” 

_ It’s a trap _ , Tamzin thinks, but she smiles politely. 

“I’m doing well,” she says, suppressing the urge to shrug. “The district I’m in is cozy. My apartment is nice. The neighbors don’t mind having Guardians around, mostly.” 

“That’s good to hear.” Ikora sets out two cups. “How are you feeling about your combat duties?” 

Tamzin swallows, though she keeps her smile in place. 

“Good,” she says. “They’re fine.” 

Ikora doesn’t speak, waiting for Tamzin to say more.

She doesn’t. Not yet. 

After several minutes, Ikora pours the tea and slides it across the table to the younger Guardian. 

Tamzin accepts it, using the opportunity to stare into it. 

“I’ve been doing patrols,” she finally says, compelled to fill the silence. “And some missions.” 

“But not very many,” Ikora supplies. “And not very often.” 

Tamzin tries not to grimace. 

“I just prefer to work alone. That’s all.” 

Ikora looks disappointed. 

“Tamzin.” 

She takes a sip of her tea, still avoiding the Vanguard’s eyes. 

“You’ve grown so much, and you’ve come so far since you first came to the City. You’ve come out of your shell, and overcome your anxieties. Your performance on missions is consistently excellent, with few exceptions.”

_ But, _ Tamzin thinks, finally meeting Ikora’s eyes. _ There’s going to be a ‘but’.  _

“But this aversion to working with other Guardians is concerning.”

Tamzin wishes Ikora looked upset. Anger would be easier to disregard. Disappointment just stings. 

“Isn’t there just… work I could do alone?” She smiles, or tries to smile. Tries to ease the tension. “I just think I do better by myself.” 

“Tamzin,” Ikora says, leaning slightly forward. “You need to learn to work with others. It’s important for you to learn how to collaborate and communicate with other Guardians, especially in combat situations.”

“I did,” she replies. “I tried it. It doesn’t work.” 

“You didn’t try,” Ikora corrects her. “I do read all the mission briefs, you know.” 

“I just don’t get along with idiots. That’s not a character flaw.” 

Ikora sits back, staring at Tamzin as if she’s studying her frustration. 

“This is a hard lesson to learn, Tamzin. I know because I had to learn it once, too.” 

She’s being patient. It makes Tamzin feel uncomfortable, for some reason. 

“You’re a very intelligent young woman, but being smart does not make you better than any other Guardians. Or people, for that matter.” 

“I can’t help being the smartest person on my fireteams,” she retorts. “And I don’t want to.” 

“There are different types of intelligence.” Ikora’s voice is firm. “That, and humility, is something you have to learn.” 

Tamzin doesn’t reply. She knows when to bite her tongue. Sometimes. 

“I’d like to see you make an effort. Join more fireteams. Work with different Guardians. Try to learn from people instead of books, for a while.” Her tone makes it clear the meeting is over. “We can discuss how it’s going in a few months.”

“... Sure.” Tamzin hesitates, but she sets down her teacup on the desk, getting to her feet. “Thank you for the tea.” 

She can feel Ikora’s eyes on her back as she walks to the door, feel the weight of her stolen book in her pocket. She feels a small thrill as she puts her hand on the knob. 

“Tamzin?” 

Ikora sounds amused. Tamzin freezes. 

“I believe you forgot something.”

Tamzin turns back, feigning surprise as she puts a hand to her pocket. 

“Oh! Silly me.” She fumbles with it, pulling out the book as if she’s never seen it before. “Guess I forgot to take it out after climbing down the ladder.” 

Ikora just waits, watching Tamzin quickly walk back and set it on her desk. 

“Thank you,” she says. 

The young warlock just nods, cheeks burning with shame as she turns away once more. She nearly slams the door on Rho in her haste to get out.


	9. present day

“Tower, do you copy?” 

Radio silence. Static.

Tamzin frowns, tapping at her helmet as if hoping she’ll fix a loose wire. 

“Why are you calling the Tower?” Gaelen asks, voice slightly distorted by the transmission. “Nothing worth reporting yet.” 

“Just nervous.” Tamzin shrugs, waving Rho into view. “Check my gear?” 

“Already did,” the Ghost says, scanning her again for good measure. “If it were Fallen, I’d say they’re blocking the signal.” 

“But it’s not Fallen.” 

Tamzin looks back the way they came, toward the surface. They’ve gone through a few miles of corridors already, but they aren’t deep enough to cut off comms. 

“Hey.” 

Tamzin nearly jumps out of her skin, spinning around to find Loch standing in front of her. 

“Holy shit, Lochlan.” She puts a hand to her chest, gasping. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.” 

“Sorry.” He waits for her to catch her breath. “About the sneaking. But also… about earlier.”

“What?” Tamzin snaps the word, pausing to moderate her tone. “Is that it?” 

“I’m trying to apologize,” the Hunter says. He sounds nervous. “I was an asshole, and it wasn’t cool to try and make a move on you when we’re going on assignment.” 

“No, it wasn’t.” She agrees. “What about the other thousand messages? Am I going to get an apology for that?” 

“It’s not illegal to try and talk to you.” She can’t see his face through his visor, but he crosses his arms over his chest, defensive. “Look, I just-- I went too far back at the hangar, and with this invitation and all that, and I’m sorry. Is that enough for you?” 

Tamzin takes a slow, deep breath. The middle of a Hive-infested complex is not the place to start educating Loch about harassment and manners and boundaries, no matter how badly she wants to put him in his place.

He holds out his hand, expectant.  

Tamzin stares at it. Sighs. “...Yeah. It’s enough. For now.” 

She accepts his hand, shakes it, glad he can’t see her face. 

“Are you two coming?” Gaelen sounds annoyed, voice abrupt and loud on the comms. “We’ve got Thrall up here. Showtime.” 

“Coming,” Loch replies. He unslings his gun, checking it as he heads down the tunnel. “Don’t get started without us.” 

Tamzin rolls her eyes, drawing her own sidearm as she follows. 

“That was nice of him,” Rho says on their private channel. “And you were actually gracious, for once.” 

“I’m going to pretend that was a compliment.” 

“It wasn’t.” The Ghost retreats to safety with a shimmer of light, leaving Tamzin to listen to the crunch of Hive detritus beneath her boots. 


	10. zero hour

If her body is still intact, she can’t feel it. 

Tamzin tries to swallow, tries to wet her lips, but her mouth is dry, dry as bone. 

Bone? 

She can feel bone with her tongue. Bone above her teeth. 

“Hello.” 

Blue. Blue eyes, blue skin, dark blue hair, a soft smile. 

A gentle hand on her cheek. 

The touch is jarring, somehow, a shock after the torment that chased her into her dreams. 

She lets her eye close, and feels something wet drip down her cheek. 

“Oh, no. It’s alright now, darling. Don’t cry.” He wipes it away, voice softer now. “You’re safe. You’re going to be okay.” 

He leans over her. She can’t see what he’s doing, but she hears faint beeps. Buttons? 

She can’t feel her body. Can’t feel anything. 

She recalls the pulling apart of things, a macabre disassembly.  

“I was told your name is Tamzin,” the blue man says. “I’m Kedric. I’m going to take care of you.” 

He’s stroking her cheek with his thumb, his hand cupping her jaw, her neck. Such a small gesture, so strangely intimate for a stranger. Soothing, though. 

She can’t talk. Can’t make the muscles work to move her lips. Just watch him, half-blind, vision blurred with tears and drugs. 

“You’ve had a rough time, I think.” He smiles, but she sees the way his eyes trace down her body. She wonders--  _ fears-- _ what they see. “Don’t worry. I’ll do all the hard work. All you need to do is rest.” 

She feels his hand slip into her own. Feels warmth. 

Feels nothing at all. 


	11. solstice

_ What happened? _

They keep asking as if repeating it will change her answer, will somehow unwind the knot of things in her mind. 

_ What happened? _

Tamzin wants to scream until they stop. Scream until they all go away, until they leave her alone so she can forget it all, forget it forever. 

_ What happened? _

She never should have come back. She should have stayed out there. Stayed where none of this had to be real.

“Guardian Tamzin.” The Warlock says her name, frowning at her distraction. “We need you to tell us. What happened?” 

“I don’t know.” She closes her eyes against the colors of the room, the red of the tapestry, the black of his Cormorant bond, the lines of sunlight on the wall. “I don’t know what happened.” 

He doesn’t tell her to breathe. He doesn’t try to comfort her. He just stares, waiting, watching her bury her face in her hands, elbows on the table. 

“Your comms went dark,” he says, slow, deliberate. “The Titan said there were Thrall ahead. The Hunter went on.” 

“He died.” Her words are muffled against her palms, eyes aching as she leans into her hands as if she might blind her own mind from seeing these things again. “The Light went away, and he died.” 

She doesn’t have to open her eyes to know he’s starting to write again. 

“Let’s start there,” he says, tone infuriatingly calm. “When the Light disappeared."


	12. present day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right around now is when that graphic violence warning becomes relevant.

Tamzin reels, gasping for air. 

Something has been taken. Something has been torn away, leaving her breathless, bewildered, the darkness seeming to spin around her. 

“Pull back,” she gasps into the radio, staggering, sitting hard on the uneven floor. “P- Pull back.” 

They can’t hear her, though, or they choose not to. She can hear Gaelen’s shotgun, hear Lochlan’s uneven curse as he feels the shift, too. 

_ The Light’s gone, _ Rho says, confused and afraid.  _ It’s just-- It’s just gone. _

“Lochlan,” Tamzin says his name, trying to get his attention. “Lochlan. Something’s wrong.” 

He turns his head at the sound of his name. She sees the moment he realizes she’s fallen, because he begins to turn around, go to help her, slipping his gun into his holster. 

One instant, he’s stepping toward her, about to retreat. 

The next, there is a howl, a flash of light, a sickening wet sound. 

A scream. 

Tamzin can feel the weight of something wet and thick on herself. She lifts her hands automatically, holding her arms away from her sides, hearing the sound of something dripping off of her. 

_ Don’t look, _ Rho warns her.  _ Don’t look, Tamzin. Close your eyes. _

She looks, of course. She can’t close her eyes in the middle of a Hive nest.

She looks down, and she sees Lochlan. 

What’s left of Lochlan. 

His Ghost is screaming, she will realize later. In the moment, she can’t hear anything but the sound of her own blood rushing in her ears  as she picks up his helmet.

The ragged remains of his spine, his neck, are still dangling from the collar. 

His eyes are still open. He looks at her, and tries to say something. 

“Oh. Oh, no,” she says, voice uneven with horror. “No, no, no--” 

_ Tamzin! _

Rho is shouting her name in her head, screaming at her, but she’s dropped the helmet, is trying to crawl back up the hall, away from his frightened eyes, away from the Hive. 

_ Tamzin, you can’t leave Gaelen here. Tamzin. Tamzin! _

She can’t answer. She’s clawing at her neck, tearing off her own helmet, throwing it aside as she doubles over and vomits. 

“We need help,” she gasps, voice too high, too unsteady. “We need help. Call-- Call someone. Call Ikora.” 

_ There isn’t anyone _ . Rho is firm now, the fear gone from her voice. She has to be the steady one.  _ You just have to do your best, Tamzin. _

The Warlock is still heaving, still trying to catch her breath. 

The Hive are coming. The Hive are coming for her, and she can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t fight. 

“He isn’t dead yet,” she says, hysterical. “He knew it was happening.” 

Rho doesn’t answer. 

There’s a sickening crunch, and his Ghost stops screaming. 

_ Pick up your gun. _ Rho is stern, steady.  _ Pick up your gun, and fight. _

“I can’t.” Tamzin shakes her head, even as she reaches for her rifle, picks it up, tries to steady her shaking hands. “I can’t do this.” 

_ Do you have a choice? _

They are here. They are shrieking, frothing, trampling Lochlan’s gore into the filthy floor in their eagerness to reach her. 

Tamzin forces herself to inhale, eyes watering against the burn of bile in her nose, in her throat, on her tongue. 

“Keep calling for help,” she says, voice barely a whisper. “Just… just keep trying.”

Tamzin pulls the trigger. 

The first of the Thrall shatters like glass at her feet. 


	13. eighteen months earlier

Tamzin holds her breath, feeling the air extend through her arms, her legs, finding the tips of each finger, each toe. 

“And out.” 

She exhales on Ikora’s cue, slow and controlled, just as she’d been taught. 

“Now, inhale again, but reach for your Light this time.” 

The Warlock sounds so calm, so soothing, as if she isn’t asking her to summon destruction.

Tamzin can’t hesitate today, though. She’s faltered so many times. She doesn’t want to see the ghost of resigned disappointment in Ikora’s eyes again. 

Eyes still closed, she feels compelled to cup her hands before her like she’s trying to catch raindrops in her palms. She breathes in, and lets the Light escape from the place she’s held it, a dangerous, dreadful power she doesn’t know how to control. 

She doesn’t flinch as it expands. She doesn’t cut it off again. She just breathes, and feels the Light follow the lines of it, follow her breath into her whole being, filling her up. 

Ikora doesn’t tell her to breathe out. She does it out of habit. 

“Open your eyes, Tamzin.” The Warlock’s voice is as gentle as before, but she sounds… what? Pleased? 

Uncertainly, Tamzin opens her eyes. She slowly follows the lines of her forearms up to her wrists, to her outstretched palms--

To the Void Light coiling around her hands like curious serpents. 

“Oh.” She can’t take her eyes off of it. She wants to bring it close, wants to play with it, but she’s terrified that if she moves an inch it will disappear, go away, or perhaps explode the way the fire and lightning has before. “It’s… it’s beautiful.” 

“It is.” Ikora is smiling, and Tamzin feels a warm glow at the realization that her teacher is  _ proud _ of her. 

She draws her hands apart, and it splits, dancing between her fingers as she turns her hands over to admire it, to test it. 

“It feels good,” she admits, letting it vanish, feeling it ease back into her body. It feels like a breath of fresh air, a jolt of energy. “It doesn't feel... It's not scary.” 

Ikora puts a hand on her shoulder. Tamzin has the sudden awareness that this is the most she’s ever spoken to anyone but her Ghost. She feels her cheeks burning, a flush of self-conscious shame. 

“You’re learning, Guardian. You’re doing very well.” Ikora’s voice is firm, taking no arguments against her praise. “Now. Get some water, if you need it, and let’s do it again.” 


	14. present day

_ Open your eyes. _

Tamzin is shaking. She doesn’t want to open her eyes. She doesn’t want to see this. 

_ Open your eyes, Tamzin. _

She isn’t sure if she’s cold or frightened. Perhaps it’s both. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter. 

It’s almost as dark when she does open her eyes. The only light is from crystals and egg sacs, a jaundiced sort of glow on indistinct shapes and shifting walls. 

The first wave of the Hive are dust at her feet, chunks of exoskeleton on her clothing, the gore covering her churned into a vile mix of human and Hive. She resists the urge to shrug off her jacket and throw it as far from herself as she can. 

She needs the protection. She needs the armor. 

“Gaelen,” Tamzin hisses into the dark. Her voice is shaking, too. She sounds like she’s about to cry. “Gaelen?” 

He’s gone. Silent, somewhere, lying still or lying dead, dead like Loch, dead like she’ll be if she doesn’t run--

_ The City’s being attacked, _ Rho says.  _ The Tower--- The Tower’s fallen.  _

Tamzin closes her eyes, forcing herself to breathe, though each inhale is a painful gasp past the grip anxiety has on her chest. 

“That can’t be right.” She shakes her head, as though she can shake the knowledge out. “You’re wrong. We-- We’re gonna get out of here. We’re gonna go home.” 

Rho hushes her, and they stand in silence, listening as something skitters closer. 

_ Over there, _ the Ghost says.  _ The comm light. _

Tamzin resists the urge to tell the Ghost that she doesn’t know where  _ there _ is, but she glances to the left, farther into the nest. She thinks she sees a tiny light, gone so quickly she thinks she imagined it. 

As she stares into the darkness, waiting for it to blink again, her vision begins to adjust, and she can make out the faint shape of a crumpled body. 

It’s so far away. So close to the railing, the atrium, where a thousand more Hive could be climbing up to get them, could be climbing up to get  _ her. _

Tamzin grits her teeth, using the wall to climb back to her feet. Without the Light, her limbs feel heavy. Without her helmet, her eyes and nose are stinging from the noxious dust of worms and Wizard poisons alike. Every part of her wants to run away, run to the surface and never look back.

“I’m a Guardian,” she says to the void. Her voice is shaking so badly the words are almost incomprehensible, but she doesn’t need anyone else to hear them, to understand them. 

She tightens her grip on her sidearm. 

“I’m a Guardian.” 

She can’t leave Gaelen here. She has to-- Has to-- 

She doesn’t know how she does it. She takes one step, and then she’s running, stumbling, cracking her head on a low-hanging egg sac with a gasp, staggering for a moment before pressing on.

She can hear the Hive around her, hear the faint creaking noises of their limbs. 

They’re watching her. They’re moving, getting ready to cut off their escape. 

Tamzin drops to her knees beside the Exo, shaking him, gasping for air.

“Get up,” she begs him, words hardly a hoarse whisper.. “Get up. Please. Get up.” 

There is an unearthly screech behind her, a sense of motion. They’re pressing forward, closing in until she can see the sickly green light of Hive eyes casting her own shadow onto the floor. 

Gaelen isn’t moving, isn’t stirring at all, but Tamzin has to move. 

She scrambles to her feet, grabbing the Titan’s gun, firing into the seething mass of bodies that has gathered in her wake. She just has to keep shooting until they stop coming, until she can wake up Gaelen and get out of here. 

That’s the thing about the Hive. They never stop coming. 

She reloads, and kills, and reloads again, until the ammunition is gone. They lunge forward, and she swings the gun like a club, crushing a few Thrall skulls, beating back another. One makes it past her swing, slamming into her waist, sending her staggering back.

For a moment, she thinks she can recover her balance. She takes one more step back, one step too far, and feels her foot catch Gaelen’s legs. 

“No,” she says, arms windmilling for balance, feeling herself falling all the same. “No, no, no--” 

It’s over as soon as she’s off her feet, her own scream drowned out by the victorious cries of the swarming Thrall. 


	15. present day

The stories of the City’s fallen heroes are not like this.

Saint-14. Albios. Eriana-3. 

The Guardians who die their final deaths for Humanity go out in fierce, noble battles, willing to sacrifice themselves, unflinching as they hold the line. 

Tamzin doesn’t want to be a hero anymore. 

The Thrall drag her across the floor in their frenzy, incensed by her screams of pain and fear.  She claws at the floor as they claw at her body, her own fingers finding no purchase as their talons slice her armor, her clothing, her flesh. 

She doesn’t want to die like this.  

She doesn’t want to die at all. 

Screaming, sobbing, struggling, Tamzin is overpowered, lashing out as she is mauled a dozen blows at a time. There is no light but the glow of Hive eyes, no sense of direction, only what hurts and what doesn’t, what’s screaming in her ears, what’s wet and slick with blood beneath her. 

The onslaught falters. The Thrall tilt their monstrous heads as if listening to something. Though she’s gasping for air, head spinning, Tamzin wastes no time. She lurches toward a gap in their ranks-- through it-- feeling talons catch the tail of her coat just as she reaches open air.

The weight of the Thrall stops her short, her attempted dive turning into a chaotic scramble. She hears the sickening crack of her own skull against the wall, the crunch of bark as she lands face down in a planter. 

The Thrall is pulled down with her, out into the open air, claws still in her coat. It’s too far out to catch the edge of the planter, momentum and weight dragging her to the edge. She feels the open space beneath her legs, the awful weight of her own body. 

The fabric rips. 

She barely hears the Thrall’s shriek end over the sound of her own blood rushing in her ears.  

The tiled edge of the retaining wall is slick with her blood, preventing her from getting a grip, from pulling herself up. Tamzin hangs there, trying to catch her breath, trying to gather her strength. 

There’s a hot spray against her cheek each time her heart beat. It must be coming from her arm, she thinks. Something stings there, and when she dares to look that way, she sees a slice so deep it looks like a cut of meat.  

“Rho?” 

The Ghost doesn’t answer. Tamzin realizes she’s been quiet for a while, now. 

“Rho? Where are you?” 

Silence. Stillness.  

Tamzin tries not to think about dying alone. 

Blood. She’s going to bleed to death, isn’t she? 

She doesn’t know how to fix this. She just knows she has to get up before she loses consciousness. 

Bracing herself, she strains, gritting her teeth against the pain as she tries to heave herself up and over the edge.

Her hands slide off the blood-slick tile, chest hitting the wall hard enough to knock the wind out of her. Still, Tamzin lunges, grasping for any support, anything to stop her descent. 

Her hands close on nothing but desiccated greenery. 

The Thrall scream above her as the stems of long-dead plants disintegrate in her grasp, and she is released into the void of the atrium, dead petals trailing from her hands like ashes.

The monitors on the ceiling flicker far above her as she falls, still bearing ghostly images of a centuries-old Martian sky.  

She doesn’t even have breath to scream.


	16. present day

The stars are replaced with eyes, glowing garish green in the darkness above her. 

Tamzin wheezes, wondering why it feels like she’s on a boat, the ground moving beneath her.

She turns her head, trying to get her bearings. 

There's a sickly yellow light emanating from bulbous egg sacs, showing a shifting mass of worms and fungus, showing the broken angles of her own body.   Her bones are sticking out of her arm, through her sleeve. 

How long has she been out? Hours? Days? 

Not days, no. Not hours, either. She would have bled out by now. 

Still, the tears on her face have dried, and judging by the stiffness when she tries to grimace, so has a fine layer of blood. 

She tries to move, to shift her weight, but even that slight motion results in a series of ghastly crackling noises accompanied by blinding pain. 

Her gasp isn’t so loud, but it draws attention. She can hear the scuttling of Hive feet on the nest floor, their ominous voices hissing in whispers through their ranks. 

Tamzin closes her eyes, and tries to clear her mind. 

She is going to die here, one way or another. She can’t even get up to fight.  

Each minute feels like a century. She counts her breaths, counts her heartbeats, until she feels an odd anger welling up inside of her. 

Nobody is coming to save her. The Hive aren't coming to kill her. She's being left to suffer, left to die slowly while the monsters watch, likely sneering in disgust at her weakness, her pathetic state. 

The idea makes her blood boil. She's tired of this game. 

“Well?” She speaks as loudly as she can, frail voice still managing to echo in the hollow atrium. “What are you waiting for?” 

There’s a stirring, movement punctuated by the ominous hiss and click of their infernal tongue. 

She waits for a wave of Thrall, some blazing Acolyte shot, some Knight’s Splinter. 

Nothing happens. 

“Fucking cowards.” Tamzin would spit the blood in her mouth out in disdain, if she weren’t on her back. “Hive trash.”

“So impatient to die?” 

It’s a voice like fingernails on slate, like a knife on glass-- Something dreadful, piercing, cosmic, far beyond anything she’s experienced before. It sounds nothing like speech, yet somehow she can understand it, even as the words vibrate through her broken bones. 

“Just-- Just bored.” 

She replies through gritted teeth, wondering what has possessed her, where she’s found the nerve to bait a nightmare. 

“Figured it would be faster than this.” 

Maybe she hit her head harder than she thought. Maybe she just doesn’t care anymore. 

She feels ill, like something oppressive is sitting on her chest. 

“Where has your Light gone, broken thing?” 

The Wizard is above her now, blotting out all the green stars and all the green eyes. She wears fear as her robes, death as her train. Tamzin can feel the tattered hem of primal terror brushing her, settling upon her as the beast comes close. 

“Get it over with.” It’s supposed to be a challenge, but the voice that comes out is too high, too uncertain. “Stop fucking around and kill me.” 

The Wizard laughs. Tamzin feels the pressure behind her eyes build once more, feels her eardrums burst, deafening her with a horrible, hot ringing noise. 

She can still hear the Wizard, though. 

“Not yet.” 


	17. solstice

They call it a debriefing. 

They tell her how valuable the information will be. How it’s her duty to tell them anything she can remember from her time on Mars. 

Her time in hell. 

She stares at the tapestry behind the Praxic scribe, counting the threads on the weft until the numbers start to crowd out the images in her head. 

“What happened next?” 

The man’s trying to be gentle, understanding, but she can hear the edge of frustration in his voice. 

“I told you,” she says, voice strained. “I don’t remember.” 

He sighs, sitting back. Taps his pen on the table. 

“You have nightmares.” 

It’s not a question. She doesn’t respond. 

“What happens in your dreams?” 

She hesitates. She’s lost her place. Lost count of the threads. 

“They’re just dreams,” he says, as if that will soothe her. “Maybe talking about them will help.” 

Tamzin’s hand has drifted to her stomach. She doesn’t like the way his eyes follow the movement. Doesn’t like the pity she sees in them. 

It’s hard to forget the way her insides felt between her fingers, the dull panic of trying to keep her intestines from spilling out of her body, onto the filthy floor. 

“...She hurts me.” 

Her hand clenches into a fist, knotting the fabric and pinching her flesh as though she’s afraid her scars will burst open beneath her coat. 

“Again.” 

The Warlock stops tapping his pen, sitting upright. He’s ready to take notes again. Ready to put her pain into bullet points, round up the gore and suffering into neat letters on neat lines in his neat little folios. 

Tamzin takes a deep breath, and tries not to vomit on the desk. 

“I hit my head,” she begins again. “So it’s all mixed up, I think. Just bits and pieces.” 


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back at it with that violence and gore thing.

“H-” 

The taste of copper is sour on her tongue, thick in her throat. She gags, spitting it up, dragging in air like a drowning woman. Her exposed bones ache in the cold, sending splinters of fresh pain into her skull.  

“Help me.” 

The taste of blood returns, stronger, as she drags herself across the floor, drags her shattered arm and twisted legs. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to crawl, but she has to get _away_.   

“Traveler--” 

There’s a sickening sound as the shredded skin of her gut gives way, open wounds catching on the rough floor. She chokes on her words, chokes on the pain as something wet and slick uncoils onto the floor beneath her.  

“Traveler, please. Help me.” 

The Traveler doesn’t answer her prayers. Her Light does not return. 

Tamzin rolls onto her side, trying to catch her breath. Trying to put her guts back into her own stomach, her only good hand pawing uselessly at the mess.

Her sidearm presses into her ribs beneath her, a useless piece of metal now. Her ammunition is gone, save what’s left in the magazine. 

Perhaps she ought to use it to end this. Put herself out of her misery.  

Something’s groaning, a low sound that manages to make it past the ringing in her ears. It’s a miserable, awful noise. 

“Your Traveler has forsaken you,” the Wizard croons, drifting closer, leering at her prey. “Where is your Light now?” 

 _Gone_ , she thinks. _Gone. Maybe not forever, but that won’t matter. I don’t have forever anymore._

Tamzin doesn’t have words to spare, nor breath. She’s dying. She can feel it.

She’s the one making that noise, she realizes. She’s the one groaning like a gutted animal.

The Wizard is reaching for her again. 

What does she want now? The other eye? The other arm? 

More pain. All she wants is her pain.

 _Fuck it._  

Tamzin’s hand closes on the sidearm, and she lets herself fall onto her back. 

She feels the cold kiss of metal against her temple, the slight give of the trigger beneath her finger. 

 _Finally,_ she thinks, feeling a moment of relief, ready for the pain to end, ready to cheat this monster of her game. 

Something happens, then, that she doesn’t quite understand. 

Relief becomes resentment, anger, disgust. She falters. 

She huffs, and forces herself to lift her arm, to aim upward. 

Up at the Wizard. 

Gasping for air, damaged muscles screaming in protest, the power of spite and anger and hatred overcomes her pain. Her muscles spasm, her hand shakes, but she locks her elbow, flexes her fingers, and feels the gun fire. 

She’d thank the Traveler that she’d chosen to mod the little pistol to be fully automatic, if it was listening. She only has herself to thank now. 

Tamzin can hardly keep her eye open, but she bites her own tongue to stay awake, to keep her aim steady, watching her muzzle flash until the bullets are gone and she’s clutching the trigger of an empty gun. 

The Wizard’s shriek of surprise and rage is cut off as her head shatters. 

Tamzin closes her eye as the debris rains down, the corpse withering above her. 

_Stupid…_

Tamzin can barely gasp for air, breath bubbling in her throat. The Thrall are screaming, a Knight’s deep roar somewhere far above her. She lets her arm give way, falling limp to one side, her gun skittering away as her hand spasms in protest.

_... bitch._

The Wizard falls. Tamzin feels the impact, feels the air leave her body. 

She should’ve saved a bullet for herself, she thinks. 

The darkness takes her anyways. 


	19. ???

Is it a dream? 

She is herself, but she is not where she fell. 

She’s in a dark place, cold, an ice wind making her breath turn to fog against the black not-sky. 

“Rho?” 

She sits up, somehow. She isn’t in pain anymore, but something feels wrong.

The injuries. Her body--

Tamzin lifts one hand, expecting to see the shattered bone, the bloody flesh. 

It’s intact, or at least the shape of it is. The damage is replaced with some sort of fibrous growth, hard and horrid. 

She tries to claw it off, but she quickly realizes it’s eaten through her arm, latched onto her bones. It’s expanding, consuming her living skin, slowly growing up to her wrist, her hand. 

“It’s not real,” she says aloud, patting herself down, gasping when she feels more of the stuff, feels the flesh of her stomach being eaten away. “It’s not real.” 

_ What is real? _

She whips her head around at the sound of the whisper, heart in her throat--


	20. present day//zero hour

“Hey. Come on. Wake up.” 

Gaelen. Gaelen, slapping her on the cheek. Gaelen, pushing her intestines back into her stomach, trying to disentangle her insides from the gore and grime of the nest. 

“There you go. Come on, hotshot. Stay awake.” 

Is she dead? No-- No, if she were dead, she wouldn’t still be in pain. 

She just wants to sleep. She wants to rest. 

“Tamzin!” A shout, another slap, this time hard enough to make her gasp. “Shit. Look, I’m-- Just stay awake, okay? We gotta get out of here.” 

Awake. She’s awake. Confused and disoriented, but awake. 

“K- Kora.” She’s trying to speak, but the words are marred by her ruined cheek, her sliced lips. 

She tries to sit up, tries to move. It doesn’t take much work to keep her down, but he can’t bandage her if she’s straining, can’t keep her together if she rolls over. 

“I-- Ikora,” she finally articulates. His eyes widen at the name. “Ikora. I want Ikora.” 

Gaelen falters, looking around at the cavernous nest, the dead Hive, her blood smeared on the ground like spilled paint. 

She’s delirious. She must be. At the very least, she’s in shock, senseless with pain. 

“Ikora? Sure. We’re gonna go see her.” Gaelen has the sense to lie, if only to get her to stop struggling. “We’re gonna go see Ikora right now. Hold on.” 

He tightens a tourniquet around her arm, ignoring her pained noises, shifting his Mark beneath her to tie around her stomach to keep the wound mostly closed for transport. 

“Fall out,” she mumbles as he picks her up, carefully draping her on his shoulder. “Won’t-- Won’t stop bleeding.” 

He’s about to have a meltdown, knowing she’s dying in his arms. His sensors are fucked up from the fight, his balance off, but he can’t give in to the panic. 

Not yet. 

“You like counting, right?” Stupid fucking thing to say, but he remembers Lochlan talking about it, some red freak flag that he’d seen as a cute quirk. “Keep track of how many steps it takes to get out of here for me, okay? One step at a time.” 

“Steps... ” 

She slurs the word. Falls silent, save for her ragged breathing. He can hear her blood dripping onto his back, falling from her face one thick drop at a time. 

“Don’t fucking die on me,” he says. “Not you, too.” 

“Sorry.” She coughs, and he can hear the blood in her chest. “T... trying.” 

Tamzin doesn’t speak again. 

He starts a distress call on all channels as soon as they near the surface, unable to hide the panic in his voice as only silence answers him. 

At last, there is daylight. There is sky. 

The Exo falls to his knees in the sand, easing Tamzin off his shoulder and to the ground as gently as he can. 

A dark stain begins spreading in the sand beneath her head, a halo of blood. Her eye is half-open, unfocused, her breaths shallow and quick. 

“Mayday,” Gaelen says again. His call is becoming disjointed, rambling. “Please. Someone.  _ Anyone _ . We need help. She’s hurt real bad.” 

There’s a burst of static. A beep. 

“--there?” 

Gaelen waits, frozen, unsure if that was a truly a response. 

The voice comes again. 

“This is VTOL Cassandra. Trauma class medical aircraft. What are your coordinates?” 

“Fuck.” Gaelen exhales, flooded with relief. “Yeah. Coordinates. I can-- I can send them right now.” 


	21. present day

Even as the sun beats down on her face, heating the sand, she’s freezing cold. 

Gaelen finally stops screaming. He shakes her again, talks at her, but she just closes her eyes, tries to focus on breathing. 

Someone warm picks her up. 

Tamzin doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to  _ be _ moved. It hurts, it all hurts, and every little jarring motion is like a hundred knives being twisted into her bones, nerves alight and screaming in agony. 

It hurts  _ less _ , though. Less than it did when Gaelen carried her. 

The fabric against her filthy cheek is soft, the shoulder beneath it broad. There are strong arms holding her, careful hands cradling her as if she’s made of glass. 

“I know,” the man carrying her says, as if he’s read her mind. “I know. Just a few steps, just a little farther.” 

She doesn’t want him to put her down. She wants to fall asleep like this, let the pain go away again while she feels safe--

A smooth, hard surface beneath her. Bright lights washing out the room, the sky, the faces. 

She’s cold again, except her hand. Someone’s holding it. 

“What’s her name?” 

Hand gone. Alone. Something metal, something tearing. 

Colder, now, bare skin and blood, the tug of her clothing being pulled out from beneath her, the careful removal of her softsuit’s collar. 

“It’s uh-- Uh--”

“Her fucking _ name. _ ” The voice is angry now, commanding. “Tell me.”

“Tam,” Gaelen finally supplies, cowed by this sudden authority. “It’s Tam, Tamzin or something.” 

“Go to the cockpit. Radio your people. I need to--” 

She must black out. 

It’s silent, and then there’s hands on her again, a hand cradling her cheek, a hand at her neck, an ache in her chest. 

“Hey,” the voice says. He’s got blue eyes, blue hair, the lights a halo around him like some facsimile of a stained glass angel. “Hey there. Come on, stay with me.” 

She coughs, and her entire body feels like broken china. 

“There you go. Good girl.” He draws back to look at something, and she sees-- What? White. A line of bright red. “Had to give you a bit of a jumpstart there.” 

He’s talking. She’s fading out again. 

“No you don’t,” he says, taking her face in his hand again, giving her a shake. “None of that. Wake up. Come on.” 

Tamzin is trying to decide if she has the strength to punch the next person who shakes or slaps her. She settles for a noise of displeasure, an attempt at a snarl. 

Whatever she manages, it gets the point across, prompting a soft laugh from the man. 

“That’s right,” he says, stroking her filthy hair. “Stay angry. You can be as mad as you want, as long as you’re awake.” 

It’s hard to look at him, vertigo making her world spin, an overwhelming sense of nausea dragging at the edges of her agony. She closes her eye, tries to focus, tries to make it all stand still. 

“You’re dizzy, aren’t you?” the man says. “Can you squeeze my hand so I know you’re not falling asleep on me?” 

She tries. Fails. 

She opens her eye at a soft touch, a breath, and he’s pressing his forehead to her own, a startling, intimate gesture.

“Is this easier?” He asks, voice soft to match their proximity. “I know. There’s a lot going on.” 

It is. It’s much easier. He’s blocked out the bright light, his closeness keeping the spin of vertigo inside her head, not jarring her vision. 

“... Yeah.” 

It’s hardly a breath, hardly a whisper at all. He hears it, though, and he smiles as if she’s given him something priceless. 

He has strange eyes. She might see the stars in them, she thinks, burning behind that bright and foreign blue. 

She vaguely recalls some warning about Awoken eyes, though she doesn’t remember the shape of it. She doesn’t feel any danger here, just an odd, overwhelming sense of… 

Safety. 

“Do you know what’s going on?” He’s still stroking her hair, her cheek, gentle as can be. “Do you want to know?” 

She tries to say something, but her lips won’t shape the right sounds. She has to think about it, sort through the mess of her mind to find a simple response. 

“Hive,” she finally manages, shuddering slightly at the word. “Dying.” 

“Half right.” The man pauses, closing his eyes for a moment, as if he’s the one feeling dizzy. “You’re not going to die. I’ll make sure of that.” 

She waits for him to continue, focusing on each breath, wondering why she’s starting to feel better when he’s not doing anything at all. 

“Right,” he says, as if he’s been distracted. “You’re not going to die. I’m giving you some of my blood, and once that’s done, you can rest.” 

She wants to ask if he’ll shake her awake again, but being tart requires far more energy than she has right now. 

“Do you think you can stay awake that long, Tam?” He’s trying to be kind, smiling at her. 

She’d roll her eyes if she could. 

“...zin,” she corrects him, vaguely frustrated that she can’t form the m. He seems to get the idea, nonetheless. 

“Tamzin.” He repeats. “Sorry.” 

He lifts his head, looking at something. He seems paler than he was, not that she’s in any state to trust her memory of his complexion. 

“There we go.” He sounds pleased with himself. He fiddles with something, hissing softly as if he’s in pain. “Close your eyes,” he says, moving away, letting the light flood in once more. 

She lets her head fall to one side, the side that isn’t blind, lets the blood run out of her mouth and nose like water from a drowned woman. 

“There’s no answer,” Gaelen says. “There’s just-- They’re being slaughtered!” 

_ Shut up, _ she thinks, his voice painful in her damaged ears. 

“Keep it down,” the blue man snaps. “Tamzin. Spit out what you can.” 

His voice goes gentle again when he talks to her, dabbing her lips clean of blood. She feels him put something on her face. Feels the cool bite of oxygen in her lungs. 

“You can sleep now,” he says, voice almost a whisper again. “This will help. Just don’t die on me.” 

_ This? What... _

The anesthesia drags her into oblivion before she can even finish the thought. 


	22. present day

Kedric sags into a chair with a long, weary exhale, peeling off his gloves with clumsy fingers. 

Perhaps he should’ve stayed upright. He’s not sure he’ll be able to stand up again.

“... Is she going to be okay?” The Exo speaks carefully, obviously braced for another irritated response. “Is she going to live?” 

Kedric doesn’t answer for a long minute. His head is swimming, his body aching from hours of work, hours of stress, and no small amount of blood loss from tranfusions.

“She’ll live,” he finally says. “What are you going to do now?” 

The Exo shifts in his seat, damaged plating scraping as he moves. 

“I think… I think I’ll go back to my ship,” he replies. “Try to find the survivors. Figure out what we can do to fight back.” 

Kedric wonders if he’s in denial, or if he’s truly stupid enough to believe the Cabal won’t annihilate any resistance. 

He doesn’t really care what the answer is. 

“Put in the coordinates,” he says. “She’ll get you close enough to transmat.” 

The Exo hesitates, but he doesn’t speak his mind. He gets up and goes back to the cockpit, letting the door shut quietly behind him. 

Kedric sighs, forcing himself to lift his head and look at the monitors. He swears when he sees how much time has passed. 

“No wonder,” he mutters, rubbing his face with his hands. He leans forward, shoving the bloody gloves into the hazmat disposal. “Eighteen fucking hours.” 

The girl can’t hear him, thankfully. She woke up more than enough times while he worked, the sedation not quite enough to counteract the pain. 

“I need to sleep, too, you know.” He picks up a stray rag, halfheartedly dabbing at the blood on the table. “And eat something, since you borrowed half my blood.” 

The Exo is back, holding his dimly lit Ghost in his hand. 

“We’re here,” he says, as if Kedric’s his shuttle driver. “I’ll be going now.” 

“Alright.” Kedric resists the urge to shrug. “Do you want my call sign so you can know how she’s doing?” 

His awkward pause says all that Kedric needs to know. He grits his teeth. 

“Never mind. Get out of here. Go save the City or whatever you think you’re going to do.” 

“... Yeah.” The Exo’s shoulders slump. “I-- Look, even if she doesn’t make it. Thanks for helping. For trying, at least.” 

Kedric can’t be bothered to correct him again, though he wants to put him in his place. The Guardian might not care about the woman he saved, but at least he tried to get help for her. 

“You’re welcome,” Kedric says, a terse edge to his voice. “Good luck.” 

He sits in silence, waiting for the faint alert that marks the departure of the nearby ship from his radar. 

“Looks like it’s just us now,” he says, reaching out to take his patient’s hand in his own. “Just us bleeders.” 

She doesn’t stir. Her breaths are even, keeping time with the soft beeps of the monitors around her. 

“If I make a call, will you be okay?” Kedric raises an eyebrow at her as if she’ll answer. “Or will you wake up or crash again? You seem to like doing that.” 

Her fingers are cold. He frowns, hauling himself to his feet with a groan of discomfort. A few taps on the display, and the table begins warming up beneath her. 

“Be good,” he says. “I’m gonna be right over here.” 

He leans out the door as he waits for the call to connect, straining to hear any irregularity on the monitors. 

“What the fuck do you want?” The voice on the other end of the line is clearly annoyed and quite unhappy to be awake. “Do you know what time it is?”

Kedric can’t help feeling a rush of relief at the sound of his sister’s voice. 

“Good morning to you, too.” He rubs his forehead, trying to think clearly. “Look, uh… Prin’s out of the house, right? I have a situation. And I don’t think she’ll be too happy about it.” 


	23. twenty months earlier

“Is there something wrong with you?” 

Rho’s frustrated question bursts from her like a gunshot, the sharp words ringing loudly against the concrete walls. People stop talking, falter in their steps as they turn to stare. 

Tamzin just tugs her hood up, looking down to hide her burning cheeks. 

“Be quiet,” she admonishes the Ghost. “There’s nothing wrong with me at all.” 

Rho waits for the gawkers to move along before she continues. 

“There must be,” she finally continues, once the gawkers have moved along. “You don’t talk.” 

Tamzin shrugs her shoulders. 

“Like that!” The Ghost floats in front of her, trying to stop her in her tracks. “You don’t use your words. You just shrug, or nod, or walk away!” 

“What about it?” Tamzin frowns, looking past her. “I talk to you.” 

“Barely.” Rho matches her sidestep, unwilling to let her pass. “It’s weird. You need to be social. You need to talk to people.” 

“I don’t.” She tries another sidestep, but the Ghost blocks her once more. The Warlock sighs, crossing her arms over her chest. “Why do you care, suddenly?” 

Rho would look sheepish, if she had a face. 

“Ikora was asking about you,” she admits. “She wants to meet with you about your… progress.” 

“She what?” The color drains from Tamzin’s face, eyes widening slightly as the words sink in. “Why?”

“It’s been four months, Tamzin.” The Ghost sounds weary, as if she’s explained this before. “You ought to be doing missions by now, or at least in the Crucible. You haven’t even used your Light yet, as far as I’ve seen.” 

“So you told on me?” The hint of anger in Tamzin’s voice is a strangely pleasant surprise. She doesn’t show emotion often. “You tattled to one of the commanders to get me in trouble?” 

“I didn’t need to,” Rho snaps in return. “When I brought it up, she said she already knew.” 

Tamzin turns away, attempting to compose herself. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing.” Her voice shakes, and Rho can see the tension in her shoulders, her back. “I’m not one of these heroes everyone thinks I am.” 

The Ghost drifts forward hesitantly, carefully bumping against her Guardian’s shoulder. 

“... You were chosen to be a hero,” Rho says. “A Guardian. And once you learn how to use your powers, you’ll know that’s all you ever could be.” 


	24. ???

She’s in the library, the same place she sat dozens of times before, a small stack of books before her. Something feels off, though. There’s usually at least a few people here. 

She checks the time, but she doesn’t remember it once she looks away. With careful, automatic motions, Tamzin opens one of the books to find pages of blurred, incomprehensible words. 

“Oh.” She flips a few pages, tone vaguely dismayed as the blurs persist. “I’m dreaming.” 

Usually she’d wake up now, her mind uncooperative in her lucid dreams. 

This isn’t her usual sleep, though. 

She sighs, shoving herself away from the table. If she can’t read anything, it’s not worth sitting around in the dream library. Instead, she follows a sense of deja vu, tracing a path that feels familiar to chase a memory she can’t quite place. 

“You’re going the wrong way.” 

Rho is beside her as she turns, floating patiently. 

“You’re here.” Tamzin smiles, feeling an odd sense of relief. “Is it really you? Are you okay?” 

“I used up nearly all of my Light to keep you alive,” she replies, as if it were a terrible inconvenience. “If you live, you’ll have to get used to life without me.” 

Tamzin keeps walking, sidestepping a faceless Hunter jogging down the corridor. 

“He knocks you down, usually,” Rho remarks. “I don’t know why he’s always here.” 

“Does he?” Tamzin doesn’t bother glancing back. She takes the steps two at a time, barely pausing at the top to catch her breath. “I can’t remember something important enough to dream about happening on the plaza.” 

“That’s because--” Rho starts to speak, but she bumps into her Guardian’s back as she stops short in the doorway. “Because it’s not the plaza.” 

It’s Titan, an Arcology, white and clean and pristine, the sea an unnatural green outside the windows along the corridor. 

“Is this the right way?” Tamzin asks. The courtyard has gone away behind them, the stairs now dark and metal, descending into the maintenance areas. “I guess it has to be.” 

“You’re walking into your death again.” The Ghost sounds resigned to it, as if she’s seen this too many times before. “I wonder, do you feel pain when it happens here? You never remember when you wake up.” 

“I hope not.” She walks on, though her steps are slower, more cautious now. “I think I’ve had enough of that for a while. How do I die?” 

“I won’t ruin the surprise.” Rho’s dry tone earns her a glare, but she just keeps looking ahead, keeping pace with her Guardian. “Watch your step.” 

She sees the floor is cracked and buckled beneath her, though it didn’t look that way before. Frowning, she hops over the uneven patches, hesitating at the edge of a water feature. 

“That’s not the right way.” 

The voice is startling, strange in this setting yet somehow familiar. Tamzin turns to find the speaker, jumping when a hand catches her wrist. 

“It is,” Rho says, sounding irritable. “You’re not supposed to be here.” 

The Awoken man gives the Ghost a sidelong glance before his arm slips around her shoulders, his attention entirely on Tamzin. 

His face isn’t crisp, but it’s there, in a shifting, distant sort of way. His eyes, though-- His eyes are clear and bright, something memorized, something real. 

It’s odd, she thinks, that he feels so warm. She doesn’t usually feel warm in her dreams. 

“I promised I wouldn’t let you die, didn’t I?” 

She nods when it becomes clear he expects an answer. 

“Well, I meant it. Come on.” He uses his arm to guide her, turn her back the way she came. “We’re going somewhere better.” 

Tamzin looks over her shoulder when she realizes Rho isn’t following them. The Ghost is still hovering by the fountain, glaring after them like a sullen child robbed of a toy. 


	25. present day

The Ghost is silent and still in his hands, a shell the color of the sea scratched and scorched from the struggle beneath the dunes of Mars. 

Kedric gently buffs some of the grime away. 

“You saved her, didn’t you?” 

It’s silly to be asking a dead Ghost questions. Her eye is dark. Her shell is still. She’s hibernating, if she’s alive at all. 

And yet, though she was supposedly dark before Tamzin was injured, some things don’t make sense to him. He put his hands into her, patching her up a piece at a time, and found intact arteries in the midst of ravaged tissue. 

His patient is still stable, still sleeping. He reaches out and tucks her hand beneath the blanket, lingering for a moment to impart some warmth to her icy fingers. 

“She’ll be okay,” he tells the Ghost, as if he believes it can hear him. “I think we’ve pulled it off.” 

The Ghost doesn’t answer. She is still and dark, but at least now she is clean. 

He puts her in a cubby, padded by towels, and closes the door to be sure she won’t fall out. 

All is quiet, save the sounds of the monitors, the steady sound of his patient’s breathing. 

“Tamzin?” 

He says the girl’s name softly, and his heart warms to see a slight spike in her vitals in response. He settles down beside the bed, covering her hand with his own, gently warming her fingers. 

They twitch, barely, slight enough to be a reaction in her sleep-- But then she moves them again. 

Kedric feels a small burst of delight at the movement.

“You can hear me, can’t you? No, don’t try to-- Just your hand is fine.” 

There’s a soft huff, fogging up her oxygen mask, and he realizes she’s scoffing at the idea that she might try to nod in this state. 

“You’re going to be okay,” he begins, wondering what to tell her. “You’re safe with me.”  

He can’t help thinking about the way she felt in his arms, frail and frightened and fighting to stay alive. The way she began to cry when she woke up, as if the gentle touch of his hand were a relief. 

_ Dying _ , she’d said. She was so weary. So… 

He can’t tell her that her home has been destroyed. Not yet. 

“All you need to do is rest, and you’ll be good as new in a few weeks.” Months, more likely. Perhaps longer. He doesn’t want to distress her. “Are you comfortable?” 

She moves her fingers again, though he’s not entirely sure what her answer is supposed to be. He hopes it’s a  _ yes _ . 

They sit in silence like this for a while, Tamzin drifting in and out of sleep as he strokes the back of her hand. 

“We’re going to the Reef,” he finally says. “I’m going to try to take you somewhere more comfortable, once you’re stable.” 

He wonders if she’s ever been to the Reef before. Is she one of the old Guardians? Has she seen the Queen? Or is she a young thing, fresh from some forgotten grave? 

“Do you want to hear about the Reef?” Kedric asks. She must be able to hear the smile in his voice. “Some stories from my home?” 

She’s still for a long while, but at last, she moves her fingers. 

_ Yeah. _

Kedric eases back in his seat, closes his eyes, and begins to weave her dreams. 


	26. present day

When he pauses in the doorway, Gaelen sees a tired, beaten man. 

Zavala stands in the dark with his hands braced on the table, maps of the City and the system spread out before him. He isn’t looking at the papers, though. His head is bowed. His eyes are closed. He looks… fragile. 

Gaelen’s mind recoils from the word as he eases back around the corner. The sight of his commander in this state makes it all feel real, suddenly. As long as Zavala is strong and certain, a bulwark, any battle seems manageable. Even without his Light, Gaelen knew that Zavala would have some solution, some plan of action. 

He didn’t think he’d find him like this. 

Gaelen steadies himself and takes a step, loud. The sound of ringing metal announces his presence as if he has only just come upon the door, as if he never saw Zavala’s moment of quiet grief. 

“Sir,” Gaelen greets him, watching those hands rearrange papers, run down lines on the charts. “Reporting for duty.” 

“At ease, Guardian. I see they’ve finished your repairs,” Zavala replies, giving the Exo an appraising once-over. “Are you feeling better?” 

“Yes, sir.” Gaelen flexes a hand, still somewhat tentative. “I came straight here to debrief.” 

“Of course.” 

At a gesture from the Vanguard, Gaelen moves further into the room, standing across the table. He’s too well trained to avoid eye contact, but he can’t help seeing the multitude of small, red marks on the maps, a list of names on a tablet. 

The questions and answers are so routine that he won’t be able to recall his answers later. Roster. Objective. Departure. 

Engagement. 

“Hunter Lochlan…” 

Gaelen stumbles over the name, wondering how saying it can make a heart that doesn’t exist ache. 

“Killed in action.” 

Zavala gives him a moment, glancing down at his notes as if to grant him privacy. 

“And your third? A Warlock, correct?” 

“Yeah.” Gaelen clears his throat, an affectation of discomfort. “The Warlock… was injured.” 

He remembers the way she screamed, those haunting wails of pain. He’d almost left her there. Almost run away. But those noises… 

“Warlock Tamzin.” Zavala’s found her name on his list. “I didn’t hear anything about an injured Warlock arriving with you.” 

“We-- We found help.” Gaelen shakes his head, tries to refocus. “But she was in bad shape. I don’t know how long the Hive had her, but she was torn up. A ship answered my distress call, and a medic tried to save her.” 

Zavala is staring at him, waiting for a definitive answer. 

Gaelen realizes with sudden clarity that he’d abandoned a fellow Guardian to the care of a stranger. How would it look to Zavala, this upright man, to hear about his haste to leave her, to get to Titan, to get away from the girl who had lived when his best friend had died? 

If Lochlan hadn’t been with her to talk, if he’d been with Gaelen, he would still be alive.

“She died.” 

The lie comes so easily that it surprises Gaelen. It doesn’t feel like a lie, though. He’d seen her. He’ll never forget the way her blood ran off the table like water, the sight of her shredded muscles and shattered bones protruding from the gaping wounds in her arm, her face. 

The sounds she made. 

“Her injuries were too drastic,” he finally continues. “The Wizard had tortured her. She fought, but… without her Light, she didn’t have a chance.” 

For a moment, Zavala looks sad. He taps a name on the tablet, draws a small X on his map, and sighs. 

“We’ve lost too many Guardians,” he says. “You have my condolences, Gaelen.” 

The Titan bows his head. 

“We’ll avenge them, sir.” He keeps his voice steady, his hands clenched painfully together behind his back. “We’ll take back our City, and we’ll make those Cabal bastards pay for every Guardian they’ve killed.” 


	27. interim

Time doesn’t work the way it ought to anymore. 

Tamzin loses track of the space between her dreams and the waking world, the border between realities blurring into a fog of drugs and desperation, the sensation of something dark at the edges of it all that waits to drag her down. 

There’s the blue man, the Awoken doctor, soft and sweet to her, a soothing voice and gentle hands that take away her pain and fear. He comes into her dreams, sometimes. He seems to be protecting her from something, steering her away from some abyss. 

He’s not always there, though. He can’t always protect her. 

She falls into dark places, feels the world give way beneath her. Feels the corruption burning through her bones.

“Tamzin.” 

The Wizard drops her. 

A ship. White walls, white ceiling, crisp, cold air. Blind on one side, save the times he pulls away her bandages, drips something cold and wet between swollen lids. Flashes of light. Something foreign, something that burns. 

“It’s safe to move you,” he tells her, one or five or fifty days later. “I’m going to take you home for a while.” 

Home? 

Not her home. 

The tubes are removed, one by one, discomfort replaced by the absence thereof. 

He holds her again, picks her up the way he did on Mars, wrapped in some sort of blanket as he cradles her against his chest. 

She likes the way he smells. 

“She’s cute.” A strange, cool hand on her cheek, a girl’s voice. “You did a good job on the stitches.” 

She dreams they’re in the mountains, that she’s standing on the edge of a lake, cold and clear despite the rusted remains of some alien spacecraft rising from the depths. 

Someone picks her up and eases her into the water, but it isn’t cold and sharp.

She wakes up.  

She’s in a bath, propped up like a doll, warm water up to her chest, something soft behind her neck as large yet gentle hands support her head.  

“Hello,” Kedric says. He’s carefully shampooing her hair, bubbles running down his wrists. “Close your eyes.” 

She does as she’s told, drifting as water runs through her hair, down her neck, turning the water a faint rusty color with old blood. 

“... closed up nicely.” 

Tamzin opens her eye, realizing he’s talking to her-- has been talking to her. He sounds far away, muffled, but when he speaks the faint and constant ringing seems to fade. 

“You’ll feel much better once you’re clean.” It’s a singsong tone, the sort of voice one would use to comfort a child, a frightened animal. “You can soak for a bit, and then we’ll put you to bed.”

The water’s draining away, the blood and dirt disappearing down a drain she can’t see. He helps her lift her head, running his fingers through her hair, and she can smell the faint scent of oils on his hand, easing out the knots and soothing the irritated skin of her scalp. 

“Where am I?” 

It takes so much effort to form the words, to move her lips, her jaw. Her voice and throat feel tight, the muscles of her face stiff beneath the bandages. Her own voice sounds strange, distorted by her damaged ears. 

He smiles at her, and it feels familiar, somehow. Perhaps he’s smiled at her like this before. 

“We’re in my sister’s home,” he replies, gently drying her hair with a towel. One hand lingers at her cheek, and she feels a soft pressure as he begins massaging her jaw with his thumb. “In a little hidden settlement in the Reef.” 

She can feel the water rising again, warm and clean, lapping at her legs, her toes, her hips. 

“How long?” 

She doesn’t have the strength to elaborate, though she wants to. How long since the Hive, how long since the radios went silent?

Her jaw feels a bit less stiff when he moves his hand away. He gently tucks her wet hair behind her ears, combing down her fringe. 

“Since I found you? Six weeks.” He turns off the tap as the water covers her chest once more, the steam warm against her cheeks. “Since we got here? Only a few hours.” 

He pulls something out of her ears, being careful not to pop them. 

“To keep the water out,” he explains, showing her the small wads of wax and fiber. “But you should be able to hear me better now.” 

She ought to have a million questions, a thousand thoughts swarming in her mind. Instead, they’re lost in a fog, floating away on the bathwater, slipping out of her grasp when she tries to pin them down. 

“Do you remember anything?” 

He’s stroking her hair, now. Comforting. She turns her head to look at him, see if he matches the man in her dreams, the shell she created to match his voice. It wasn’t far off, she decides. He’s just more defined here, in the real world. 

His eyes are brighter. 

“Kedric,” she finally says, the name making her cough as her voice begins to warm up. “You’re Kedric.” 

“That’s right.” He’s trying to hide how much that pleases him, she notes. “Is that all?” 

Tamzin closes her eyes, reaching for the pieces that will bring it back together. All she finds is debris, damage, the recollection of someone rifling through her psyche with claws and pain. 

“The Light,” she sighs. “My Light’s gone.” 

Kedric doesn’t speak. He just keeps smoothing her hair, watching her face, waiting for her to find the words. 

“Was I a Guardian?” 

He seems surprised at the question. Perhaps that’s expected; she’s hardly sure she’s in her right mind. 

“You were,” he replies, tone careful. “You still are. Don’t you remember?” 

Tamzin is quiet for a while, closing her eyes once more. She reaches for her Light. 

She finds nothing. 

She finds a memory. 

She recoils from the echo of pain, of cruel hands rummaging through her soul for that absent power.  

The water starts to cool, and for several minutes she can’t quite feel where the bath ends and she begins. 

“It doesn’t feel real.” She tries to lift her hand, only managing to make it float to the surface. It’s too heavy in the open air, her latticed cast as heavy as iron for her weakened muscles. “Nothing really does.” 

Kedric begins draining the bath again, making some noises of reassurance as he rises to get a towel. 

“This is real,” he says, carefully lifting her from the tub. “Your life before was real, too.” 

She tries to stand, to put some weight on her legs, but her muscles spasm in protest. She gasps in pain, but Kedric is still supporting her, hushing her softly as her fingers dig weakly into his arm. 

He holds her until the pain eases, lowering her to the edge of the bath and kneeling before her in one smooth, slow motion. 

“These will heal,” he reassures her. He’s toweling her dry, the soft cloth tracing each livid scar beneath his gentle touch. “You’ll be back on your feet in no time.” 

She stares at the red marks, the lattice where stitches once held them together, wondering how the memory of them feels so much more vivid than any other. 

“What’s wrong?” Kedric dabs at her neck, picking up a few stray drops from her hair. “You look pale.” 

Tamzin knows she should say something benign, something vague, but her mind and her mouth won’t let her be coy right now. 

“The Hive did something to me,” she tells him. “Something’s wrong.”

“Oh, no.” He wraps the towel around her like a shawl. “It’s just a bit of head trauma. When you’re not-- When you’ve hit your head, it takes a while to recover. That’s all.” 

He’s trying to reassure her, but she heard that hesitation, that stammer as he avoided mentioning her Ghost, her Light, her lack thereof. 

She wishes she could put the way it feels into words for him, make him understand the way the Wizard reached inside of her, the way she hurt her. She closes her eye and tries to push back the ghost of that monster violating her mind, her spirit, claws shredding through her psyche as if it were cheap gauze. 

“... She was inside me,” Tamzin says instead. “I felt it. Felt what she did.” 

“I know.” Kedric takes her face in his hands, looking into her eyes with a sympathetic certainty. “But she’s dead now, lovely. She’s gone, and she’ll never hurt you again. You’re safe now.” 

Tamzin feels a swell of deja vu at those words, at the way he touches the side of her neck when he says them. Have they had this conversation before? Did she dream it? 

_ Lovely. _

Nobody touches her like this. Nobody at home, at least. 

“Come on, now.” He’s picking her up again, slipping an arm beneath her knees, her back, resting her head against his shoulder. “Let’s get you dressed and tucked in before you catch a chill.” 

“... Six weeks?”

Kedric pauses for a moment, realizing she’s misplaced her thoughts again, gotten the words out of order. 

“That’s right.” He lifts her up, shifting her weight in his arms. He doesn’t press her. He just waits for her to find the missing pieces, the question she wants to ask. 

“Ikora… Ikora would be looking for me.” 

They’re walking down a hallway, and then he’s pushing a door open, and it smells like flowers.

She closes her eye as the world starts to spin, and when she opens it again she’s sitting on the edge of a bed, Kedric beside her. She realizes she’s been dressed in a soft nightshirt, that there’s fresh bandages on her face, on her hands. 

“Tamzin?” He says her name softly, but his tone makes it clear it isn’t the first time. “Tamzin.” 

“Sorry.” She’d shake her head if it didn’t feel like her teeth would rattle at the motion. “I-- I think I dozed off.” 

“Good thing it’s time to sleep, then.” He has a hand between her shoulder blades, easing her gently back onto the pillows, lifting her casted arm to drape over her stomach. “If you need anything, just ring the bell, alright?” 

She thinks she nods. She may imagine it. 

One bed is the same as another, but she sinks into this one, feels the give of feathers and fine fabrics surrounding her. 

She hears a soft whisper, the same woman’s voice again. 

“Is she going to be okay?” 

She wants to hear the answer, though she thinks she already knows what it will be. She won’t be. She can’t be. Not like this. 

She closes her eye, trying to focus, trying to listen for his response--

And finds she can’t open it again. 


	28. six weeks after the attack on the city // present day

Kedric closes the door quietly, waiting in silence for a moment before turning to face his sister. 

“She’ll be fine,” he replies, voice low. “It’s mostly muscle, I think. If you can help--” 

“That’s not what I mean,” Jessa cuts him off. “I’m talking about her head. She shouldn’t be in that kind of shape after six weeks.” 

Kedric looks chagrined as he turns to walk down the hall. Jessa follows, hands nervously twisting the ends of her sky blue hair. 

“It’s not just head trauma, is it?” She waits until they’re in the living room to ask, voice still low, as if the girl could somehow hear them. “You’re lying to her.” 

“I’m lying about a lot of things,” Kedric admits. “She’s not in any shape to know what happened. And I don’t know what to do about… about her mind. All I can do is take care of the rest and hope she’ll be able to heal.” 

“Like what? What happened to the City? What’s happening on Earth?” Jessa sits heavily on one of the sofas, brow furrowed as she looks up at him. “You can’t lie to her about that.” 

“I can do whatever I want to do. Stop eavesdropping and mind your own business.” Kedric looks around the room with a weary expression, as if he’s forgotten why he came here. “... I need to eat. And then I need to check on her.” 

“You need to sleep.” She isn’t leaving room for debate. “I can keep watch and wake you up if anything happens.” 

Kedric stares at her for a long minute, shoulders slumping as he lets out a long sigh. 

“Food,” he says, meandering toward the kitchen. “Then sleep.” 

Jessa follows him, sitting at the table, staring at him as if expecting him to say something. 

“You heard it,” he finally says, slathering some butter on a chunk of bread. “A Wizard had her. Tried to take her Light. Tortured her. I don’t know how long it had her, but it was long enough.” 

“How did she get away?” Jessa frowns. “She couldn’t walk out, could she?” 

Kedric grimaces, sinking his teeth into the bread. 

“Some Titan was with her.” He doesn’t bother to finish chewing before he replies. “Pulled her out. She looked like she’d been through a meat grinder. Thrall set on her like dogs, then…” 

He waves a hand, swallowing, leaving the rest to Jessa’s imagination. 

“Then the Wizard had her.” Jessa finishes the thought. “And it broke her.” 

“No.” His response is too sharp, making Jessa start. He shakes his head, glaring at his bread ferociously. “No. She’ll be fine. She just needs some time. She’s weak. They aren’t like us, you know? They don’t know what it’s like to have to heal. Their bodies--” 

His sister reaches out, placing a soft hand on his arm. He falls silent, turning to meet her eyes.

“We’ll talk about it later, okay? She’s alive,” she says. “You’ve done all you can for now. You need to rest.” 

He doesn’t argue this time. He takes a glass of water, pausing to peek in at his charge once more before retreating to Prin’s bedroom. 

Jessa listens for the sound of running water before she makes her way to her room, taking care not to be too loud as she opens the door. 

The girl in the bed doesn’t stir as she enters, nor as she closes the door behind her and eases onto the mattress beside her. Jessa carefully pulls down the comforter, taking in the wounds on the exposed skin.  

The Guardian doesn’t stir, breathing slow and even, body limp in the deep and dreamless sleep of the wounded. 

“You must be one helluva fighter,” Jessa mutters, resisting the temptation to lift the bandages on her face. “Probably why he likes you.” 

Kedric comes to peek in on them once he’s out of the shower, a towel draped around his shoulders to keep his hair from dripping onto his clothes. Jessa’s propped herself up against the headboard with a pile of pillows, a book in her lap, the Guardian still sleeping soundly on her own side of the bed. 

“What?” Jessa asks, voice just soft enough to not be disruptive. “I haven’t killed her yet. Go to bed.” 

Kedric make a face, but he retreats. Jessa listens to his soft footsteps, the sound of a closing door. 

“He’s got it so bad,” she sighs, flipping a few pages back in her book. “But I guess anything’s an improvement, right?” 

She doesn’t expect an answer, and Tamzin is too far away to give her one. 


	29. ???

“You’re not real.” 

The Wizard tilts her head. Tamzin can feel her studying her, taking her in like a warbeast sizing up prey. 

“This isn’t how this happened.” Her scars are turning black, skin seething as the corruption consumes it, converts it. “This is just a bad dream.” 

“Then wake up,” the Wizard  _ commands _ . 

 

Tamzin’s entire body seizes, the only sound a wretched gasp as she drags air into her aching lungs. She is weightless, suspended, limbs outstretched and immobilized by some invisible force. 

_ So fragile. _

There are shards of metal floating before the Wizard, a sparkling array of sharp edges, a grotesque parody of snow, of stars. 

_ Tell me, _ she says, voice resonating in Tamzin’s bones.  _ And your pain can end. _

“I don’t know.” Tamzin chokes, unable to suppress her welling tears. “I don’t know what you want. I don’t know anything. Please.” 

It’s the wrong answer. 

She is cut until she can bleed no more, until the blades of her tormentor’s constellation are black with her blood, until she talks. 

She says what she thinks she wants to hear, and she is punished for her lies. 

“I'm sorry," she pleads, the words thick in her throat. "I'm sorry." 

Her muscles jerk, contract, a painful spasm that makes her bite her own tongue, unable to breathe, unable to think. 

 

**What did she tell her? What did she say?**

 

Tamzin tells her everything. Anything. She tells her a thousand things that mean nothing, every secret she has, anything she can think of. 

Anything that might make her stop. 

There is a stillness, and the absence of pain. The hisses of Thrall, watching, waiting for her to be discarded for a feast. 

_ So very easy. _

She can feel the disdain in the words. She hates the way she whimpers when a rough, hard talon strokes her bruised face. 

_ And so very useless. _

The sharp claw sinks into her skin, into the muscle, scraping bone, a horrid scratching sound as it’s dragged down her face. . 

“Please.” Tamzin begs, words choked out between screams. “Please don’t. I told you what you want. I told you--” 

She tells her things she didn’t even realize she knew. She confesses to stealing books, bread, skipping meetings, lying to Ikora--

 

_ Silence. _

 

 

 

 

 

 

**How long has she been here? How many hours? How many days?**

 

The Wizard’s grip eases, and Tamzin’s head falls forward. 

She can see her own eye, she realizes, dull horror muffled by shock. Her own eye, bloody and barely attached to the remains of her face, turning lazily, hanging from strands of nerves and sinew and skin. 

She’s going to die here. She’s going into shock, and she will bleed out, alone and in pain.  

_ Not yet, _ the Wizard says, responding to her unspoken dread.  _ I am not so careless.  _

There’s a strange brushing sensation at the edge of her awareness, an exploration. 

Tamzin doesn’t even have the strength to plead for mercy, nor the time. 

The Wizard forces her way into her mind with a sensation like a rock shattering a plate of glass, sudden and sharp. 

Tamzin tries to scream, but the noise is crushed in a show of force that makes her blood feel like ice in her veins. 

 

**Agony.**

 

The Wizard withdraws. Tamzin weeps, but soon she chokes on her tears as the convulsions of a seizure overtake her.  

There is no way to adequately describe the sense of violation, no matter how many times she is forced to relive it. She is left feeling ashamed, hollow, disoriented, her very spirit aching in some intangible way. 

She vomits, body barely strong enough to heave, mouth sour with the taste of blood and bile.

_ Your Light is gone _ , The Wizard informs her, somehow sounding both pleased and puzzled by the discovery.  _ You are quite powerless. _

Tamzin doesn’t answer. 

She wonders if she’ll feel a moment of relief when she dies, or if it will hurt until the very end. 

_ No resistance? _ The Wizard sounds amused.  _ Come, now. Spare yourself. _

“I told you,” she rasps, voice weak, shaking with her sobs. “I told you everything.” 

_ Lies. _

The second assault is a drawn-out and deliberate horror, an exercise in sadism. Tamzin’s vain efforts to resist are brutally crushed, and she is left reeling, helpless. 

_ Stop, _ she begs, unable to voice the words, unable to stop her pained noises, her body’s strange shuddering.  _ Please. Please stop. _

The Wizard laughs. Tamzin can feel the heat of blood in her ears, in her throat, empty stomach trying to revolt once more though she’s too weak to even gag. 

_ Pathetic. _

 

 

Another seizure takes her.

 

This time, it takes the pain as well.  


	30. present day

“Tamzin. Tamzin, wake up. Come on, lovely, wake up--” 

Her head jerks up, hitting his jaw with a loud crack. Kedric bites back a curse. 

He can feel every muscle in her body tense as she wakes, exhaling on a ragged cry of fear. 

“Hey,” he says, ignoring the spot of pain blooming on his jaw. “Hey. You’re safe now. It’s okay. It was just a nightmare.” 

She wants to flee, wants to run, struggles, but he holds her tight, a hand running up and down her back with a steady, soothing motion. 

“Deep breaths. There we go.” 

The tension fades, the strength of adrenaline sapped away, her head spinning. She lets him ease her head to one side, ease her cheek onto the firm expanse of his shoulder. She hides her face against his neck, and he can feel her trembling, feel the cool drop of a tear on his own skin. 

“I’m not going to let anyone hurt you,” he repeats. “You’re safe now.” 

Jessa is staring at the girl, bewildered. He wonders what she senses, with her heightened empathy. If Tamzin’s pain is this palpable to him, what must it feel like for her? 

“I’m sorry,” Jessa says, voice soft. “I didn’t hear her.” 

“It’s not your fault.” Kedric shakes his head, the motion releasing the scent of his freshly washed hair. “She’s quiet until the end, usually.” 

Jessa gives him a strange look, as if she’s debating whether or not she ought to tell him something. 

“They did something terrible to her,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “The things she said...” 

Kedric just draws Tamzin closer, a protective gesture. 

“... Yeah.” 

Tamzin mumbles something that Jessa can’t make out, but Kedric smiles, a gentle expression.

“You’ve been waking me up for nearly two months,” he replies, brushing her hair away from her face. “I’d be worried if you stopped now.” 

He holds her until her heartbeat slows, until her breaths are even. Jessa eases back down to her pillow to wait, though she doesn’t sleep. 

She watches, and she thinks.

The sunlight is beginning to lighten to room, Kedric ready to nod off himself. 

“Is she asleep?” Jessa keeps her voice low, lifting herself onto one arm to try and see the girls face. 

Kedric shakes his head, but he pauses before speaking, hand stilling on Tamzin’s back as she mumbles something-- Starts again. 

The words are soft, but they can both hear them clearly. 

“... I’m hungry.” 

The siblings share a smile, relief and delight easing the tension in the room like a breath of fresh air. 

“Good,” Kedric replies. He presses his face against her hair, and for a moment, Jessa thinks he’s going to kiss her. Instead, he sighs aloud. “That’s very good, lovely. Let’s get you sitting up and I’ll see what we can find.”

 

 


	31. present day

Jessa stops in the kitchen doorway, frowning at her brother’s back. 

“Put it down.” 

Kedric sighs loudly, though he doesn’t do as he’s told. He finishes filling his glass of liquor, deliberately taking his sweet time to replace the bottle on the shelf. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be doing something?” He takes a sip as he looks Jessa over. “Like keeping an eye on our guest?” 

“She’s fine.” Jessa shrugs, pulling a bottle of fruit juice from the icebox. “She’s awake. I’m going to try working on those muscles you won’t shut up about, if you want to come help.” 

She gives his drink a pointed look. He just takes another sip, staring her down indifferently. 

“Whatever.” Rolling her eyes, Jessa turns to go. “She’s lucid enough to ask about the City, though. I’m not going to lie to her for you.” 

“Don’t you dare.” 

She smiles at the sound of his glass being set on the counter. His footsteps are quick to keep her from getting into the room without him there, as if she’ll blurt out a ten second summary of the Red Legion’s attack if given half a chance. 

Tamzin is propped up on some pillows, her pale skin strangely out of place in her very Awoken surroundings. Kedric pauses in the doorway, taking in the sight like a breath of fresh air. 

Her russet hair has dried in soft waves, only her bangs lying flat and neat on her forehead. Her freckles are still standing out on her cheeks, a faint flush bringing a new color to her skin. It’s not quite a blush of health, though-- And he can see that shine of fever in her eye when she turns her head to look at them, her dry lips quirking into a slight smile when she recognizes him. 

That smile tugs at his heart. He slips past Jessa, sitting on the bed beside his patient’s legs with the ease of practice, taking her hands into his own. 

“Hello, lovely.” His voice is so soft, so sweet, that Jessa has to suppress a snort of laughter. “Are you feeling better? Do you need anything?” 

Jessa’s amusement fades quickly as she watches the girl’s face. Tamzin opens her mouth, prepared to speak, but the words don’t come out. The long minutes of silence are painful, the air heavy with anxious anticipation as she struggles to sort her thoughts into speech. 

“... Yeah,” Tamzin finally manages, voice tight. “I am.” 

There’s a new sort of shine in her eye by the time she manages to answer, and Jessa feels a stab of guilt at the sight of the Guardian’s welling tears.

“We’ve got some broth,” Jessa says, beginning to walk to the other side of the bed. “But here’s some juice for now. Do you think you can keep it down?” 

Tamzin nods, eye fluttering shut at Kedric puts a gentle hand to her brow. 

“Just a little warm,” he says, smoothing a thumb across the line of her cheekbone. “We’ll get something for the fever, and you’ll feel much better.” 

“Will this…?” Jessa holds out the glass for her brother’s approval. He gives her a grateful smile, taking it and offering the straw to Tamzin. They watch her close her lips around it, with some initial difficulty, a slight tremor of muscles in her bandaged cheek before she manages to seal her lips. 

“There we go.” Kedric is encouraging, only drawing the glass away when his patient is obviously finished, though it takes an age for each sip. “That should help.” 

“Apples,” Tamzin says, voice tinged with wonder. “I haven’t tasted apples…” 

They wait for her to finish the thought, to find the memory. After a few agonizing minutes, her expression has shifted to a mess of fear, distress, frustration-- 

Kedric takes her hand in his own, turning it over and examining her newly uncovered nails. 

“That’s a shame,” he says, as though she’s found her words, as if she doesn’t look ready to cry. “I like apples quite a bit. You can have them every day while you’re here, if you want.” 

“How long will I be here?” 

He brings her hand up, and for a moment, Jessa thinks he’s going to kiss it. Instead, he just peers at a bare nail bed, making a soft sound of sympathy as he examines the livid skin. 

“Until you’re recovered,” he replies. Jessa gives him a look, but he graciously ignores the silent correction: _Until our sister returns._ “We just have to be patient.” 

Tamzin closes her eye as he examines her hand, brow furrowed slightly with concentration. 

“How long… How long until I’m better?” 

“Very good,” Kedric smiles, closing his hands around her own without missing a beat. “You’ll be giving lectures in no time.” 

He turns and takes the glass of juice from Jessa again, deliberately ignoring the flash of dull frustration as the girl realizes he won’t answer her question.


	32. present day

Tamzin focuses on a spot of light, a tiny beacon on the ceiling far above. 

_ One _ , she counts.  _ Two. Three. Four _ . 

She can hear Kedric breathing, asleep in his chair across the room. 

_ Five. Six-- _

_ Nine _ . 

It’s like a page torn from a book. A gap in time, or memory, or-- 

“Make a fist,” Jessa urges. She grits her teeth, as best she can, focusing on the muscles, shoving back her horror at how violently her arm shakes at the effort. “There you go. You’re doing so much better!” 

Her body aches when she wakes up, chest burning as she gasps for air. 

Kedric is there, the way he always is. As her strength returns, she realizes she clings to him, anchoring herself to his comfort. 

She doesn’t try to stop. 

“You know what happened, don’t you?” Jessa, soft-spoken. “He just wants to protect you.” 

It takes so much effort to make her tongue form the words she wants. 

“The City fell,” she replies. “They’re all dead.” 

Jessa hesitates before shaking her head. 

“The City fell,” she confirms. “But they’re not all dead. Just… Just trying to regroup.” 

“They’re not looking for me.” Tamzin closes her eye, tries not to let the meaning of her own words sink in. “I’m no use to them like this.” 

The light in the room has changed. Kedric sits beside her, not Jessa. 

He looks bewildered. 

“... You’re improving,” he says, taking her hand in his own. “I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you say.”

Tamzin doesn’t answer. She’s staring at the ceiling again.

Kedric takes a deep breath, and feels her hand shudder in his grasp. 


	33. present day

Tamzin begins to heal. 

Kedric will never be sure if time or the safety of his sisters’ home are to credit for her recovery. Perhaps it’s both. 

She begins to wake up in the mornings and stay awake, her odd little blackouts becoming infrequent. He begins to see flashes of her personality, her irate expressions, those flashes of a temper she doesn’t have the energy to sustain. 

She still has her odd pauses, those moments when she can’t find her words. She becomes more frustrated with these failures as time goes on, as she becomes more aware of the time she’s losing. 

“Hey.” Kedric catches a tear with his thumb, gently stroking her cheek as he wipes it away. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be perfect right away.” 

Tamzin flexes her hand, but it shakes all the same when she rubs her face with the back of her hand. 

“How long will it take?” 

He sighs, taking her hand in his own. She watches his fingers as he begins to carefully massage it, finding the scar tissue and tension with gentle pressure. 

“It depends.” He could lie to her again, but he wants to begin easing her back to the truths and bad news she’ll soon have to bear. “A few weeks. A few months.” 

He doesn’t tell her that he can’t account for what the Wizard may have done to her. He doesn’t want her to know he stays awake at night, trying to puzzle out which symptoms could be from Hive cruelty rather than physical trauma. 

He can’t know, in the end. He has to treat it like it’s all one and the same. 

She still has her nightmares. Jessa abandons the pretense of keeping watch after the first week, moving her necessities into Prin’s room and giving her brother knowing looks when he protests her implications. 

“She feels safe with you,” she finally says, cutting off another disclaimer. “And you want to protect her. If she wants you there, who cares what it looks like? There’s nobody here to judge you but me.” 

Tamzin falls asleep beside him each night, a hand lightly resting on his arm, some concrete reassurance that she isn’t alone. He sleeps lightly, ready to sit up at the first sign of distress, ready to hold her and soothe her until the worst of her dreams pass. 

“They don’t want me anymore,” she says. Kedric glances up at her face, hands faltering where they’ve been massaging oil onto her scars. 

“Who?” He’d been in his own head, feeling the scar tissue and muscles beneath the skin, noting where Jessa’s help may be needed. 

“The Vanguard.” She says it so quickly, so easily. He feels a moment of pride, a brief rush of delight in her progress, but the meaning of her words quickly drowns it all out. 

“Why would you say that?” He frowns, exploring a calcium deposit with his thumb before starting to dig into it. “I’m sure they’re just preoccupied.” 

Tamzin is quiet for a long while. He tries not to be annoyed by the way her body tenses when he shifts his grip, that reminder of her newfound discomfort with being touched that inexplicably irks him. 

“I lost my Light.” She finally replies. “I’m useless. I can’t fight. It’s no wonder they wouldn’t be looking for me.” 

Kedric’s hands falter again, but this time, Tamzin notices. 

“... They’re looking for a lot of Guardians,” he finally admits, voice low. “They’ve lost a lot of people.” 

“What?” 

Kedric tries to hide his grimace, bracing himself. 

“The Cabal took the City,” he says. “They took the Traveler. Every Guardian lost their Light, and if they didn’t die in the invasion, the Cabal hunted them down and killed them.” 

“... I know.” 

He looks up sharply, but she shakes her head, keeping him from interrupting her. 

“Not about the Cabal,” she manages. “The rest.” 

“Did Jessa tell you?” He can’t keep the edge of irritation out of his voice, and it makes Tamzin’s lips quirk into a smile. 

“I heard.” She inhales sharply as he finds a tender spot. “The radio.” 

He knew he should’ve turned that thing off. Kept it off. 

“Want anything?” Kedric asks, picking up the empty glass and plate from the bedside table. 

“Yeah,” she replies. “I want to walk.” 

He just puts on a smile and shakes his head, leaving her to sulk as he retreats to the kitchen. 


	34. present day

He comes into the kitchen like a storm cloud, his aura of misery so dense that Jessa glances up from her book before he even drops the dishes into the sink with a clatter. 

“Did she reject you?” Her sweet tone carries a bite of sarcasm. “Called it.” 

Kedric only gives her a half-hearted glare as he slumps into another chair, elbows thumping roughly on the table. Jessa picks up her teacup to save it from a spill, lips twisting in annoyance at the close call. 

Instead of answering, Kedric just sits with his face in his hands, looking for all the world like a dramatic painting of despair. 

“You were all smiles and sunshine when you went in there,” she finally says, taking a delicate sip of her tea before setting it down. “You can’t mope in here with that kind of face and not tell me what happened.” 

“Nothing happened.” Kedric sounds petulant. Jessa wishes he’d look up to see her impassive stare, but he just sighs. “She knows about the City. She knows about the Cabal.” 

“Did you think you could hide it from her forever?” She frowns, casting about for a marker to put in her book. “It’s not like it changes anything. They’re not exactly picking up the phone back there.” 

He isn’t smiling when he drops his hands from his face. He looks anxious, harried, as if all these weeks of rest and respite haven’t helped him at all. The way he looked after the Taken War. 

Jessa shakes her head, as if that might shake off the memory. 

“She thinks they’ve given up on her,” he says, voice low. “They probably did. But if that Exo made it back, if he told them--” 

They sit in silence for a long minute, each turning over the possibilities in those scenarios. 

“Kedric,” she says, voice soft. She reaches across the table, covering his hand with her own. “Even if they know she’s alive, they can’t take her away from you. She can’t leave until she’s healed. You don’t need to worry.” 

“What if they want her back?” His hand tightens into a fist beneath hers, the tendons sharp against her palm. “What if she wants to leave?” 

Jessa waits for him to regain control of himself, showing the patience she’s only ever had for him. 

He takes a deep breath. 

“She can’t fight.” His voice is low again, moderated. “If they’ve lost so many, they’ll want all they can get. She’ll go back to them because she doesn’t know any better, and they’ll just-- They’ll throw her on a battlefield and get her killed.” 

Jessa sighs. Pushing her book aside, she moves to the seat beside Kedric, scooting her chair closer so she can easily place her hands on his cheeks. 

“Look at me, stupid.” She ignores his attempt to bat her arms away. “Nope. Listen to me.” 

Kedric scowls, but he lets his sister manhandle him into eye contact.  

“Nobody’s going to take her until you let them. She’s not going anywhere until she’s better. And if the war ends badly by the time she is, you’re going to be the only person she has left anyways.” 

“It’s not that simple,” he grumbles. “And that’s not realistic.” 

“It’s simple _and_ realistic, dummy.” 

Jessa begins to get up, giving her brother a firm kiss on the forehead before slapping the back of his head and returning to her own seat. She flips her book open again, unable to suppress a smile as he rubs the spot.  

“All _you_ have to do is not ruin it by being an idiot.”


	35. present day

All she has to do is roll onto her side, sit up, put her feet on the ground, and stand. 

Tamzin tries to visualize the motions, tries to imagine how easy it’s always been for her, how easy it _ought_ to be. 

She can hear dishes being moved in the kitchen, the sound of low voices as the Awoken siblings discuss one thing or another. She can hear birds outside the window, though she doesn’t know how or why there would be birds on the Reef, so far from Earth. She can hear water running, a sink filling up. 

She takes a deep breath and rolls onto her side. 

It’s easier than it was the first time she tried. The fact that she can do it on her own without pain is a victory in itself. Still, it’s an effort that leaves her winded, huffing as if she’s just run up a flight of stairs. 

Several minutes pass, and no footsteps approach. 

She takes another deep breath, and begins the slow, painful process of sitting up. 

If her arms weren’t injured, perhaps it wouldn’t be so hard. As it is, she has to stagger upright with one arm broken and the other a ruin of healing muscles, gritting her teeth to muffle any noise of pain or exertion that would bring Kedric flying into the room like a guard dog. 

With a final gasp, she’s sitting up, her legs over the edge of the bed. 

It hurts like hell. 

Tamzin forces herself to breathe through the pain, propping herself up with her casted arm to avoid collapsing right back onto the mattress. Her stomach isn’t ready to support her like this. She swallows harshly, a wave of nausea rising as her muscles spasm angrily. 

She has to be ready. She has to do this. 

She slides off the mattress, putting weight on her feet with a forceful exhale, bracing herself. 

The pain is blinding, but she’s hardly standing upright long enough for it to register. The real pain comes from the fall, a fall that wouldn’t be so bad if she hadn’t over-corrected. Instead of just falling back against the bed, she goes crashing forward, narrowly missing the corner of a console with her head on the way down. 

“Careful.” 

She didn’t hear Kedric coming, didn’t see his shadow in the door. He’s kneeling beside her, though, helping her up with gentle hands and a furrow of concern between his brows. 

“I’m fine,” she says. “I just… fell.” 

Kedric arches one perfect brow, but he doesn’t contradict her. He runs a hand over her knees, her legs, lifting her chin to check for any new marks. 

“Try to protect your head next time you  _ fall _ ,” he finally says, ignoring her soft noise of pain as he picks her up and puts her back into bed. “If you think this has been rough, just wait until you cause permanent damage.” 

“Maybe next time will kill me,” she replies. Her dry tone makes him blink, but then he grins, eyes sparkling at some victory he doesn’t bother to share with her.  

“Don’t get your hopes up.” Kedric tucks the blankets over her legs again, patting her affectionately on the knees. “If I was going to let you die, I would’ve done it a lot sooner.”

She keeps trying. She keeps falling. 

He keeps putting her back in bed, his patience fraying with each new bruise, each night he’s startled awake by a movement that may or may not be his patient trying to make a break for it. 

“This isn’t working.” Kedric crosses his arms over his chest, wondering if making her crawl back into bed on her own would be excessively harsh. “Any of it, I mean, but mostly this. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Fuck you,” Tamzin snaps the words, shakily getting back onto her hands and knees, glaring furiously at the doorway. If he weren’t leaning in it, she’d probably use it to stand up again. Or, to be more accurate, use it to climb up onto her feet and fall on her face again. 

“Glad to see you’re feeling better,” he sighs. “The bath is ready, if you’d like to wash up.” 

“I don’t need a bath.” 

“Mm.” Kedric’s expression makes it clear he disagrees. “Let’s go.” 

“Don’t touch me,” she snarls. “I can get up on my own.”

He doesn’t even falter. He scoops her up easily, unable to hide a smile as her arms settle around his neck. 

“Stop trying to walk by yourself,” he chides, setting her on the edge of the bath and helping her out of her nightshirt. “Seriously. We’ll get there when the time comes.” 

“Whatever.” Tamzin’s lip curls, showing a flash of teeth and disdain. “You just want to keep me here.” 

Kedric just shakes his head. 

“Come on.” He eases her into the water, sighing as he feels the tension soften in her back. “Enjoy the hot water and stop giving me a hard time.” 

She shoves his arm away, splashing water over the edge. 

“Get out,” she commands. “I can bathe myself.” 

Staring down at the water soaking the front of his shirt and pants, Kedric tries not to imagine how satisfying it would be to drown her. 

“Fine.” 

Tamzin seems surprised at his easy surrender. He just sets the sponge and soap within her reach, hauling himself to his feet with a grunt.. 

“Call me when you’re ready to get out,” he says. “I’ll be right down the hall.” 

Kedric shuts the door behind him, taking off his soaked shirt and tossing it aside. He slides to the floor, his back to the wall, head tilted back, eyes closed-- And he waits. 

 


	36. present day

The sound of the door closing seems to echo in the bathroom. Tamzin stares at it, waiting for him to lean back in, to check on her, to insist that she needs help. 

He doesn’t return. 

_ This is easy _ , she tells herself. This is what will come naturally, what she doesn’t need help with. 

She grabs the soap, and her hand spasms painfully. 

Her gasp of pain doesn’t summon Kedric, either. 

“It’s just a cramp,” she whispers. “Get over it.” 

The soap falls beneath the water this time, and she feels it slide out of reach. Tamzin bites her lip, focusing on her leg, trying to execute what should be a simple kick to bring the bar closer to her hands. 

Her leg won’t bend the way she wants it to. Her nerves prickle painfully in protest as she tries to force it. 

She stares at the far end of the bath, wondering how those few simple feet can be so impossibly out of reach. 

“Fine,” she hisses. “I’ll just wash my hair, then.” 

But washing her hair poses even greater problems. She can’t sink low enough to get her hair wet and get back up. She can’t coerce her fingers into putting enough pressure onto her scalp to lather it if it were wet. She can’t even lift the small cup Kedric’s used to rinse her hair out before, and when she tries, it falls into the bathwater and comes floating back to the top with a crack down the side. 

For some reason, the stupid cup is her undoing. She feels the hot pressure behind her eyes, tears blurring her vision, and before she can smother herself a loud, angry sob escapes, echoing like a shout against the tile walls. 

She expects Kedric to burst in at the sound, to come rushing to her side, but the door stays shut. 

Good. 

Tamzin couldn’t quiet herself if she wanted to. She lets herself cry until she can’t anymore, until her face feels swollen and her sobs fade into whimpers and sniffles. 

The water’s cold and the bubbles have gone flat. She halfheartedly tries to wipe her nose with one hand. 

“Here.” 

She didn’t hear the door open. 

Kedric gently takes her chin in hand, cleaning her face with a wet cloth. They sit in silence as he works, apart from Tamzin’s occasional shuddering sobs, Kedric’s soft soothing noises. 

“Feel better?” He reaches into the bath, pulling up the plug before fishing out the soap. 

“No.” She hopes she doesn’t start crying again. “I’m useless. I can’t do anything by myself. I hate it.” 

Kedric takes a slow, deep breath. She finds herself imitating him, feeling the tension in her chest ease ever so slightly as she watches him. 

“Will you believe me if I tell you that you don’t have to be useful?” 

Tamzin wishes the words weren’t so gentle. They shouldn’t comfort her like this. 

“I’m a Guardian,” she replies. “I was brought back to be useful.” 

Kedric props his chin onto one hand, watching her face as he waits for the water to drain. 

“You’re not a Guardian right now,” he says, as if the idea’s just occurred to him. “You’re just Tamzin.”

She resists the urge to argue that point. 

“We should have you talking more.” He sighs, plugging the bath again and starting the hot water. “Real talking, I mean. Not just swearing at me.” 

“I want to walk,” she says. “I need to be able to fight.” 

Kedric just reaches past her, pouring a little oil into the water. It’s a scent she can’t identify, some heady mix of Reefgrown flowers. 

It makes the world feel a little less awful, for a moment. 

“Let’s start with the easy things.” He dangles a hand over the edge of the tub, testing the temperature as the water rises around her. “Tell me about yourself.” 

Tamzin glares at him for a long time, but his smile doesn’t fade. 

“I’m a Warlock.” She huffs. “I specialize in Void energy and long-distance engagements.” 

“I don’t want to know about Guardians,” Kedric says. He’s turning off the tap, rolling up a towel to put behind her neck. “I want to know about Tamzin.”

“What’s the difference?” She lets him ease her forward, unable to resist relaxing her brow when he presses a certain spot with practiced fingers. “I shoot things.” 

“What’s your favorite food?” He starts to wet her hair, a hand shielding her face from the worst of the overspray. “Do you like spicy or sweet things? What’s your favorite color? What sort of books do you read for fun?” 

Tamzin sneezes, sending a few bubbles floating up into the air. 

“I like blues,” she says. “Green blues.” 

“There you go.” Kedric pours another cup of water over her head, humming softly as the red waves darken and fall flat. “That’s a very good place to start.” 


	37. present day

The days blend together, and the world outside these rooms doesn’t seem to exist anymore. 

Jessa seems edgy, checking her messages constantly, glancing at her calendar until Kedric makes her keep her tablet out of the room. 

Prin will be coming home soon, apparently. Tamzin doesn’t have the faintest idea who that is or what it means. 

She doesn’t really care. 

“Tell me about your home again.” 

Kedric lifts the covering from her face slowly, an inch at a time, making sure the skin beneath isn’t peeling away with the soft material of the patch. Jessa sits on the opposite side of the bed, chin propped up on her hands as she watches. 

“I told you,” Tamzin mumbles. Her eye is closed, arms draped over her stomach. “It’s just a normal building.” 

“You told me about the mosaics,” he prompts. “You must like something about it.” 

She’s quiet for a while, thinking. He makes a soft noise of apology as something tugs, making her flinch. 

“Someone took all the broken glass from some bottles or something and made tiles out of them.” Tamzin can trace the patterns in her mind, the way she used to run her fingers over the textured wall as she ran down the courtyard stairs. “They go from blue to green to gold, then at the bottom it’s…” 

These things happen less, now, her mind stitching the shreds together as steadily as her body repairs her muscles. Still, he can see her frustration as she grasps for the word, some definition to match the image in her mind. 

“... Amber.” 

“That sounds lovely.” He presses the skin of her forehead lightly before pulling away the last of the dressing, soothing the spot with soft sounds of comfort. “There we go. Look at how well you’re healing up-- Well, no, you can’t. In a minute, though!” 

Jessa leans forward, trying to gawk politely. 

“I want to see the eye,” she says, voice almost a whisper. “You know.” 

“I’m right here.” Tamzin reminds her. “I can hear you.” 

“Sorry,” Jessa smiles. “Still.” 

“It’s not ready yet. You know that.” Kedric sighs. “Nerves are… stubborn. And I’m not sure how the connections will take.” 

“Why wouldn’t they? It’s my own eye, isn’t it?” Tamzin was expecting a quick confirmation, but the glance the siblings share over her is the opposite of reassuring. “What did you do?” 

“Yeah, Kedric.” Jessa leans back, grabbing a bowl of grapes from the bedside table, putting a few in her mouth. “What did you do?” 

The look he gives his sister is nothing short of poison, but he just shakes his head. 

“I couldn’t save your eye,” he explains, dripping something onto Tamzin’s freshly unbandaged cheek. “But I found some Golden Age tech shortly before I picked you up, and since it seemed functional…” 

“You put some kind of dusty antique into my  _ head? _ ” 

“It was new in box,” Jessa informs her. “If that helps. Even Kedric wouldn’t repurpose an eye he found in a random skull.” 

“You’re not helping,” Kedric sighs. “I was just exploring some old Braytech medical facilities. It’s not the same color as your original, but I think it’s pretty.” 

“Oh, well, as long as it’s nice to look at.” Tamzin’s sarcasm makes him grin. “Is it going to work? I can’t shoot without depth perception.” 

“It’s going to work.” He sounds slightly more certain than he feels. “Jessa’s given the nerves some help, and once your skin and muscle grafts have fully healed you’ll be good as new.” 

“I want to see it.” 

“You don’t want to see your face yet. Trust me.” Kedric is pulling another dressing out of his kit. “These are giving your new skin the proteins it needs to be firm again. I don’t need you fretting about how it looks now when it’s not anything close to how it will look in a few weeks.” 

Tamzin looks to Jessa, who makes a half-shrug of agreement. 

“He’s not wrong. It’s still pretty gross.” She offers Tamzin a grape, dropping it between her teeth when she opens her mouth for it. “The eye is pretty, though.”

Tamzin just grunts. Kedric carefully applies the new dressing as she chews, smoothing it down one area at a time. 

“There. All done.” He digs for something else in his kit, coming out with a bottle and a dropper. “Just this, and we can bandage you up again.” 

“What if I say no until you let me see a mirror?” 

Kedric doesn’t even hesitate. He leans over, opens her eyelid, and expertly applies the drops. 

“Let me know when you can back up your demands.” He screws the cap back on before giving her a patronizing pat on the hand. “And try not to hurt me too badly when you do.” 


	38. present day

Cayde-6 isn’t an art guy, but he can appreciate a nice view. 

The top of the Vex construct towers above the centaur’s surface, where the emerald sky and blood red foliage spread out in all directions like a tapestry. 

“Vex squadron 300 meters to the west,” Sundance informs him, scanning the Nessus horizon for a different reason. “Cabal scouting ships 12 kilometers northeast.” 

“Scouting ships, huh?” The Hunter checks his guns one more time, making sure everything is holstered and ready to fire when needed. “Bet I know what they’re looking for.” 

“I don’t think they’re scanning for Guardians,” Sundance replies thoughtfully. “Based on their radio chatter, I think they’re surveying for resources. Mining sites.” 

“Helpful.” Cayde squints down, tracing the line of the wreckage across the centaur’s surface far below. “Any chance you can track down a Vex gate while you’re eavesdropping?” 

Sundance doesn’t dignify that with a response, turning around to get a better idea of her signals. 

“Southeast,” she finally says. “Decent amount of Vex activity. Muffled, though, so probably underground.” 

“Can’t be out in the rain, can they?” Cayde almost steps out into the open air from habit, hesitating as Sundance squawks in warning. “Dammit,” he mutters. “Gotta climb down.” 

“Vex don’t rust,” Sundance informs him, drifting along near his feet as he begins his descent. “I know I don’t usually say this, but _please_ be careful.” 

His boot slides on a ledge, and the Ghost cringes. 

“You scared, old girl?” He laughs, a nervous pitch to the sound. “We’ve survived worse.” 

Sundance doesn’t have to say it. She just stays quiet, watching his descent, wondering what she’ll do if he does fall to his death. 

She doesn’t think she could bring him back, if the landing truly destroyed him. 

“We’ll get the teleporter,” he says, breaking the silence. “Steal it, take it back to Earth, and use it to assassinate Ghaul. Cut the head right off the Red Legion snake.” 

“Exactly.” Sundance bumps his foot to one side as he searches for purchase, directing him to a suitable ledge. “And once he’s dead, and the Red Legion are wiped out--” 

Cayde misses a foothold and drops, the force sending him swinging violently to one side. Sundance resists the urge to yell, watching her Guardian hang by one arm for several horrible seconds. 

He keeps his head, thankfully. He finds a new hold, dropping down to it, pausing to catch his breath. 

Sundance looks at the ground and tries not to imagine a shattered Exo on the leaf-strewn rocks below. 

“... We’ll free the Traveler and get the Light back.” 

Cayde doesn’t respond this time. She can't tell if he's thinking about the climb or considering all the things they can't fix, with or without the Traveler's return. 

They descend in silence, each step on the slick and narrow construct another reminder of his newfound mortality. 


	39. present day

_Wake up,_ the Wizard says. _Tamzin._

The dream seems to shudder, to slow down. Tamzin’s brow furrows, and she realizes she can move her hands again. 

The Wizard never says her name. The Wizard can’t know her--

“Tamzin.” 

She emerges from the nightmare as if surfacing in a cold lake, dragged upward by Kedric’s anxious voice. He’s shaking her, gentle as can be, voice low as he tries to rouse her. 

“Wake up,” he repeats, voice urgent. “Come on. We have to go.” 

“Go?” Tamzin is still addled with sleep, vision blurred.  “What’s wrong?” 

She shakes her head, tries to sit up, but Kedric is already rearranging her, hanging her legs over the bed so he can kneel down to dress her.

Some part of her disoriented brain screams that they’ve come for her. The Hive? The Cabal? 

Does it matter? 

Tamzin swallows bile, imagining Kedric’s corpse perforated with Cabal bullets. 

“We have to get out of here.” He taps his shoulder, and she automatically puts her arms on them, letting him lift her to slide a pair of pants over her bony hips. “Are you feverish? You’re sweating.” 

She shakes her head, but he checks himself, setting her back down on the bed and peering carefully into her face.

“You’re afraid,” Kedric realizes. A hand touches her cheek, fingers hot against the sheen of cold sweat. “It’s alright, lovely. I didn’t mean to frighten you. We’re perfectly safe.” 

“Are we?” Tamzin doesn’t like the way her voice pitches when she speaks, that edge of terror. “We won’t be out there. I don’t want to leave.” 

He drops his hand on her neck, her jaw, smiling. 

“I won’t let anything happen to you. Not here, not on my ship. Nowhere.” He lingers for a few minutes, stroking her soft cheek until her breaths even out and her pulse slows. “Everything is okay. My sister’s coming home, is all. We just have to go back to the ship.” 

Tamzin exhales, a noise that might be a laugh of shock. 

“You want to sneak me out?” She can’t make her voice stop shaking. “There’s Cabal out there. Hive. They’ll kill me. You said they’re killing Guardians.” 

Before Kedric can respond, Jessa appears in the doorway with a bag and an anxious expression. 

“I added some more food and clothes,” she says, hefting it onto one shoulder. “For her, I mean. Do you need anything else?” 

He hesitates, lifting a hand to silence Jessa. 

“We’re not going to land anywhere they might be. Nobody is going to hurt you. Nobody is going to find you. It’ll be just you and me, back on the ship.” 

Tamzin searches his face for any sign of fear, any sign that he’s lying to her. She can’t find anything but sincerity, concern--

And something else she doesn’t want to name.

“Okay,” she whispers, unsure if she’s more afraid of what’s outside or the realization that she trusts him with her life. “Okay.” 

Kedric gets to his feet, leaning forward to press a quick and shocking kiss to Tamzin’s forehead. 

“Thank you,” he breathes. With a sigh, he turns to Jessa, glancing down at the bag. “Yeah. That should be more than enough.” 

“Can she make it?” Jessa’s looking at Tamzin, pretending she can’t see her flushed cheeks in the dim light. “You can’t carry them both.” 

“I have to, so I will.” Kedric takes the bag from his sister with a smile, bending his knees and hoisting it onto his back with a grunt of exertion. “Help me get her up?” 

Tamzin looks as dubious as Jessa, but Kedric isn’t taking no for an answer. With a little help keeping his balance, he scoops Tamzin into his arms, biting his lip until he finds just the right position for her. 

“You need to eat a bit more,” he remarks, helpfully blowing a stray piece of hair out of her face. “You’re not much counterweight at all.” 

“I’m not an anchor,” Tamzin retorts. Her grip around his neck tightens as he begins to walk, the hold shifting her weight helpfully away from the bag. “And I eat plenty.” 

“Take care of yourself,” Jessa says, still trailing them to the door. “Don’t start drinking again. Call to let me know how you’re doing. And don’t be an idiot.” 

“Right.” Kedric stops, turning and bending down to give his little sister a kiss on the forehead. “Thanks for helping me out, Bluebird. Be good.” 

Tamzin feels incredibly awkward being pressed between them, but it only lasts a moment before they’re gone, out in the open air, trees and crystals and impossible spires all around them. 

“We’re in a city,” she says, appropriately cowed. “An Awoken city.” 

“Not for long.” Kedric is hurrying along the path, glancing around as if afraid they’ll be spotted. “We’re going to transmat. Try not to throw up.” 

“I don’t get sick.” Tamzin frowns. “I’ve had my share of jumps.” 

He raises an eyebrow, but he doesn’t argue. 

“Here we go.” 

She takes a deep breath, and the world shifts into a pillar of blinding light and weightlessness.


	40. present day

“ _ Fuck _ .” 

Tamzin wipes her lips with the back of her hand, grumbling as Kedric immediately cleans it off with his towel. He makes a sympathetic sound, folding it over to dab at her mouth. She shoves his arm away and heaves again, chest aching as nothing but bile comes up. 

Kedric smooths her hair, rubs her back, making soft noises of comfort as she gags. 

“Deep breaths,” he urges her. “Smell this and try to take some deep breaths.” 

“This never happens,” she groans. The cloth he holds beneath her nose has some sort of spicy sweet oil on it, a scent that reminds her of winter and City sweet vendors. “I don’t get spacesick.” 

“I don’t know if you recall,” he says, teasing yet gentle. “But you had your insides rearranged a bit recently. Hitting your head probably didn’t help, either.” 

She mumbles another curse, closing her eye and trying to suppress another heave. 

At least they’re weakening, she thinks. At least it doesn’t feel like one of her ribs will shatter this time. 

“Can’t wash up, can I?” She mutters, letting his clean up her face again. “No baths in space.” 

“I do have a shower,” he says. “But those require standing up.” 

Tamzin makes a pathetic sound, slumping back against the wall. They sit in silence for a few minutes, breathing, waiting for her stomach to settle. 

“Feel like you can move?” Kedric asks, dabbing some of the mess on her shirt. “Get washed up?” 

“I can’t stand up,” she reminds him. “I can’t take a shower sitting on the floor.” 

He shakes his head, setting his towels aside and hauling himself onto his feet. 

“I’ll help, if you don’t mind. Or we can do it with some towels. Up to you.” 

Tamzin sniffs, grimacing at the burn of acid in her nose. 

“Are you propositioning me?” There’s a faint edge of her intended sarcasm in her voice, though it’s hard to convey alongside her misery. “Seems a bit early to be taking showers together.” 

“Cute.” Kedric bends down and helps her up, setting her on a chair with a sigh. “But I’ll be keeping my clothes on.” 

Tamzin doesn’t want to think about why that answer feels like a rejection. 

“Now, pick one. Shower or sponge bath?” Kedric is pulling off his shirt, tossing it on the pile with the towels. “Going once. Going twice.” 

“Shower,” she replies. “Get it over with. Wash my hair.” 

“Great.” Kedric smiles, and Tamzin tries not to stare at his body. “Arms up!” 

She looks away, terribly conscious of the heat in her cheeks, and lets him undress her. 


	41. present day

“Just one more step.” 

Tamzin shakes her head, jaw clenched so tightly her teeth ache.  

“Hold on,” she pants. “Just-- Just hold on.” 

Her legs are ablaze with pain, nerves shooting fresh spikes of agony up her back, her spine, each movement awakening some new form of agony. 

“Okay.” Kedric stands before her, supporting her, cupping her bony elbows in his palms to take some of the weight. “That’s fine. We can wait.” 

He inhales slowly, holds it for a moment, and exhales. 

After a few of these, Tamzin finds herself imitating him, though her breath comes out in a ragged huff of pain. 

“Did you find anything you like in my collection?” He shifts his weight back, but he doesn’t try to make her move yet. “I know it’s mostly medical texts, but there’s a few things mixed in that won’t bore you to death.” 

She drags in a breath, and her grip on his arms tightens. Kedric smiles, trying not to flinch as a trail of blood tickles across his skin. 

“History,” she replies. “Something about history.” 

She takes a step, her breath becoming a whimper. He shushes her, makes a soft noise of approval.

“Do you like history?” He watches her feet, making sure nothing is twisting as she finds her balance. “I can find more of it, if you do.” 

“It’s interesting. That’s all. Don’t have much---” Another shaky step. Another gasp. “M-- Much Awoken history in the City.” 

“I can tell you all about that.” They’ve gone further than he’d hoped today. Kedric is glancing between her face, her legs, trying to decide if keeping her on her feet will do more harm than good. “History’s one of the few classes I paid attention in.” 

Tamzin laughs, though it’s a strained sound. 

“I hope medicine was one of the others.”

She tries to take another step, but her leg gives out and she falls like a puppet with cut strings. Kedric catches her easily, gracefully drawing her up into his arms before so much as a knee grazes the floor. 

“Twenty steps today!” He doesn’t try to hide his delight. “You’re doing so well.” 

Tamzin hardly has the energy to return his smile. She just nods, breathless, closing her eye as he eases her into a comfortable chair before moving about the ship’s main cabin. 

“It seemed to hurt less today.” He returns with a damp cloth, kneeling before her to clean her face of sweat and tears. “It helps when you let me support you, see?” 

“Whatever.” She opens her eye as he picks up her hand, carefully cleaning her fingers. “What are you doing?” 

“Nothing,” he replies. “Just getting some sweat.” 

Tamzin frowns and grabs his wrist. He lets her pull his arm up, though she hardly has the strength to do it without his help. 

“You’re bleeding,” she says, tone accusatory. “Why didn’t you say something?” 

“Because it’s not a big deal.” Kedric can’t suppress a puzzled smile, watching her frown at the marks left by her nails. “Are you upset?” 

He reaches for her other hand, but she draws it back to herself, letting his arm drop. 

“Not that upset.” He sighs, sitting back on his heels. “And here I thought you were used to me touching you.”

“I am.” Tamzin replies too quickly. “I mean-- It’s not that.” 

“Oh?” Kedric raises an eyebrow, reaching for her hand again. “Then what is it?” 

This time, she lets him take both of her hands, helping her sit up and forward with a few huffs of exertion. 

“... Nothing.” 

Kedric sighs, but he doesn’t push her, doesn’t leave. He just waits. 

“You should bandage those,” she finally says. “Before they get infected or something.” 

“These little things?” He releases one of her hands, holding up his forearm to show her the small crescents of red on his bluebell skin. “They’ll be fine. A little spit and good as new.” 

She leans forward slightly as if to inspect them, lingering for a moment. 

Hesitating. 

Kedric feels a new sort of shock as she brushes a kiss across the soft skin of his inner arm, lingering for a moment that feels like hours.

When she draws back, she has a smear of his dark blood on her pale lips. 

“There,” she says. “All better.” 

Kedric swallows so loudly he’s sure they can hear it on Io, painfully aware of his stiffening cock. 

“Yeah,” he finally manages, voice a bit too high in pitch. “That’ll help.” 

He watches Tamzin’s blush spread from her neck to her cheeks. For a moment, he considers leaning forward to kiss the blood away. 

She turns her face from him before he can succumb to the temptation. 

“I think I need some water,” she mumbles. 

“Y- Yeah.” Kedric clears his throat, staggering to his feet and quickly turning away. “Let me get-- I need to-- Just a minute.” 

He closes the bathroom door too loudly, muffling his groan of distress with his forearm as he leans back. 

_ This isn’t right, _ he tells himself, fumbling with his pants.  _ She’s a patient. She’s your patient. _

But he moans her name into his sleeve all the same as he finishes, hips jerking sharply into his own hand as he imagines her lips stained with more than his blood.  


	42. present day

It’s been nearly a week, and she still wants to sink into the hull and disappear. 

Tamzin buries her face in her hands and tries to erase the image of Kedric’s uncomfortable expression from her mind, pressing her palms into her eyelids until they hurt. 

He doesn’t like her like that. She was too aggressive, too forward, too awkward. 

She wasn’t a beauty to begin with. Now she’s a wretched, bony thing with half a face, trying to flirt with a gorgeous Awoken man with the body of a god and the voice to match. 

Stupid. How absolutely, utterly stupid of her. 

“What are you thinking about?” 

Tamzin closes her eye and tries to will the flush of shame in her cheeks away. 

“What?” She stalls for time, keeping her back to him, still staring at the tablet before her blankly. 

She feels like an idiot. The memory of that exchange still makes her sick with embarrassment. 

Kedric puts a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“You seem stressed,” he observes. “That’s all.”

Tamzin can feel the tension in his touch, the odd restraint. 

It only makes her feel worse. 

“Nothing,” she says. “I’m not thinking about anything.” 

Kedric is quiet for a long stretch, but at last, he sighs. 

“Let’s get you on your feet.” He sounds weary, and it hurts even more after all his past cheerful encouragements. “Come on.” 

“Why do you say it like that?” She frowns, half-turning to see his face. “If you don’t want to, we don’t have to.” 

“What?” Kedric meets her eyes, obviously flustered. “No. It’s not like that. I’m just… distracted.” 

Tamzin stares at him, trying to find the answer she wants in his face. All she finds is discomfort. 

“No.” She finally says. “No. I don’t want to.” 

Kedric blinks as she turns her back on him, turns to pretend she’s reading a blank tablet screen. 

“Tamzin,” he begins, ready to argue. “Come on.” 

“Leave me alone.” 

He draws back as if she’s slapped his hand. She can feel his disappointed gaze on the back of her neck. 

“... Fine.” Kedric is trying too hard to sound like he doesn’t care. “We’ll do it later.” 

Tamzin just bites her lip and waits for him to go away. 


	43. present day // the farm

_ Tamzin, Warlock. KIA. _

Ikora’s hand falters as she reads the name, one of so many in Zavala’s lists. She can see so many faces in her mind, so many smiles and hopeful eyes that she’s given a reassuring word or a stern rebuke over the years. 

Those gray eyes and red hair seems too vivid, though. She sees pale hands clasping a book, a guilty smile. 

_ I told her to go on more missions, _ Ikora thinks.  _ She was out there because she wanted my approval. _

She can’t think this way. Can’t blame herself for the losses, for the ones who were doing their duty when it all went horribly, terribly wrong. 

Ikora turns the page and looks up at her companion. Zavala is watching her, forearms resting on the table, hands patiently clasped as though he’s about to pray. Cayde is standing behind her, a silent, steady presence. 

They’re waiting for her to speak. Do they expect some greater plan from her? Some reassurance? 

Ikora takes a deep breath, finding her center. 

“The Guardians who have recovered their Light are our only hope,” she says, voice soft and even. “If they fail, we must have a plan for the survivors.”

She tries not to imagine the fate of Humanity, should they fail. 

“We have a battle plan to arrange first, though.” She looks between Cayde and Zavala, exerting a confidence she doesn’t feel. “And then we can discuss our contingencies.” 


	44. present day

Kedric finds her in the cockpit, a handful of loose wires and a half-removed faceplate on the panels before her. 

“How did you get up here?” He glances from the bed to the cockpit chair, then back to the broken radio. “What are you doing to my ship?” 

Tamzin glares at him, pointing a pair of loosely gripped pliers at the open panel. 

“You disconnected it,” she says, accusing. “You unplugged the radio.” 

“It’s my radio,” Kedric replies, bending down to pick up a few loose screws. “I can unhook it if I want to.” 

“You told me it was broken. You lied to me.” 

“I told you it wasn’t working, which was true.” He peers into the mess of wires and circuitry, frowning at her handiwork. “But you’ve certainly managed to break it now.” 

“I’m working with one hand,” she snaps. “It’s not broken. I’ll get it working.” 

“You’re grabbing wires and misplacing them because your hands are shaking when you grip the pliers.” Kedric shrugs. “And you don’t need to hear what’s on there.” 

“You mean the Vanguard putting out the call for any surviving Guardians? The one asking them to rendezvous?” Tamzin sees him stiffen at her words, her lips curving into a nasty smile. “Yeah. That one.” 

“You haven’t heard anything,” he says. “You’re guessing.” 

“But I’m right.” Tamzin leans forward to start fiddling with the radio again. “Move. You’re in my way.”

Kedric grabs the pliers from her hand, wrenching them easily from her and nearly dragging her out of her seat in the process. 

“I said no,” he snaps, giving her a firm shove back into her seat.. “The radio stays off.” 

Tamzin’s eyes narrow as he tosses the pliers down the aisle, far out of her reach. He starts picking up screws again, muttering some curses in some words she can’t quite understand. 

“Got something to say?” 

Kedric just shakes his head. 

“Say it. Go on.” 

“Just stop being a brat,” he sighs. “This is hard enough, you know?” 

“You think this is hard?” Tamzin sounds incredulous. “You think you’re having a rough time?” 

“When you’re acting like this, I am.” Kedric shoves the screws onto the other seat, hauling himself to his feet. “Come on. If you walked up here, you can walk back to bed.” 

“No.” Tamzin grabs for the radio again. “Let me go!” 

The struggle is short, Kedric doing his best to avoid hurting her, Tamzin just trying to get a hand on the control panel. With a final huff, he slams a button on the side of her seat, sending the entire chair sliding back a few feet and putting the radio entirely out of her reach. 

“Stop being a little bitch,” he says, breathless from their grappling. “You can’t fight anyways.” 

Tamzin flashes her teeth at him, a feral expression, but he doesn’t flinch. 

“Get up.” He clambers to his feet. “Come on.” 

She just glares at him. He crosses his arms, preparing for a standoff he knows he’s going to lose. 

“Well?” He jerks his head down the ship’s main aisle. “You made it down here. Show me a miracle.”

“Fuck off,” Tamzin snaps. He follows her hand as she tugs the hem of her pants over several scuffs and bruises. “Leave me alone.”

Kedric sighs, looking up as if he’s asking some higher power for strength. 

“Fine,” he says. He bends over, arms outstretched, ready to pick her up. “We can do this the hard way.”  

Tamzin kicks a heel against the same button he used, moving the seat forward again so suddenly that the back clips his jaw. He resists the urge to drag her out of her seat by one arm, straightening up to put a hand on what is sure to be a bruise in a few hours. 

She just keeps glaring, grabbing for the radio wires again. 

“Are you bored?” He asks, tone dry. “Is that it? Are you a fucking child who needs to act out for attention?” 

“Fuck you,” Tamzin snarls. “I just want to know what’s going on.” 

Kedric steps forward, reaching for her again, but she draws back as he grabs for her. 

For a moment, he thinks she’s about to hit him, her hand balled into the best fist she can make with her casted arm. He flinches, but the blow doesn’t fall on him. 

Instead, she slams it into the radio panel with a resounding crack. 

Kedric glances to the source of the noise, taking in the potential damage. The radio is still intact, of course. There’s hairline cracks along the lattices of her cast, though, and when he follows the line of her arm, he sees that all the color has drained from Tamzin’s face, leaving her freckles standing out on skin a ghastly shade of gray. 

“Well, you tried.” He can’t keep the smugness out of his voice, catching her as she swoons forward with a strangled noise of pain. “Idiot. Come on.” 

Kedric sets her on the exam table, making sure she can sit upright on her own before getting to work. Neither speak as he cuts her now-broken cast away, though he can tell each movement causes pain. 

“You broke it again,” he finally says, using a handheld scanner to examine the bone. “At least you didn’t shatter the whole thing this time.” 

Tamzin doesn’t reply. When he looks up, he sees blood staining her lips where she’s bitten through the skin. 

He tries not to think about the last time she had blood on her lips. 

“Hey. Come on.” Kedric puts a hand on her jaw, tilting her face toward him. “I’ll get something for the pain, okay? You can ask.” 

She shakes her head. She still won’t speak. 

“I’m not mad,” he reassures her. It’s not entirely a lie. “I just lost my temper. We’ll fix you up and everything will be fine again.” 

That seems to be the last straw. 

“Fine?” Tamzin sounds like she’s about to cry. “Nothing’s fine. Nothing’s ever going to be fine again.” 

Kedric tries not to cringe. He’s had a feeling this would come again, sooner or later. 

“I know it feels that way right now,” he says, trying to sound soothing. “But it’s not the end of the world. As long as we’re alive, there’s always another chance…”

She’s sobbing loudly, though, and Kedric knows his words won’t stop the deluge now. He sighs, quietly, putting a hand on her shoulder as she wails. 

“Everyone is dead,” she says. “Everyone’s dead or fighting, and I’m useless. I can’t do anything. I never could.” 

“That’s not true,” he attempts to interject. “You’re just upset.”

“It is, though.” She sniffs, sob interrupted as he moves her arm and starts cleaning it. Might as well get a new cast on while she’s getting this out of her system. “I’m a terrible Guardian. I’m n- not a hero. I can’t save any of them.” 

Kedric slips a tablet into her mouth as she cries, lifting a cup of water for her to swallow it with.

“I need to set this,” he tells her, trying to keep his voice gentle. “It’s going to hurt. Okay?” 

She nods, or sobs dramatically. He can’t really tell.  Either way, she screams like she’s been stabbed when he pulls the bone straight. At least it seems to shock her into silence, the only noise a few hiccups and sniffles as he slips the brace over it.

“This way,” he prompts her, helping her turn to one side. As she clumsily crosses her legs, he helps her rest the braced arm on an odd little cradle. With the press of a button, the ship begins to print a lattice of support along the length of her forearm. 

“While that works,” he says, glancing around the cabin. “Let’s talk.” 

He pulls a bottle of something dark from a cubby, followed by a pair of short, square glasses. He sets them on the table before her, uncapping the bottle and pouring a few ounces into each, catching a floating droplet with one finger and dabbing it on her lips with a mischievous smile. 

“Now, then.” He crawls up onto table in front of her, crossing his legs and pushing the other glass into her unoccupied (and uninjured) hand. “Take a sip. It’ll help the pain.” 

“What is it?” She watches him drink, sniffing warily at her own glass. “It smells weird.” 

“It’s very expensive Reef liquor,” he replies. “My mother will skin me if she ever figures out I’m the one who stole it, so enjoy it while you can.” 

Tamzin takes a very tentative sip, nose wrinkling at the strength as it burns on her tongue. 

“There you go.” Kedric swirls his glass around, watching the liquid slosh with a thoughtful expression. “You’ve been in a mood for the last few days, you know. Did I do something to upset you?” 

“I haven’t been in a  _ mood _ ,” she grumbles. “I’m fine.” 

“Really.” Kedric raises an eyebrow at her. “I give you the rarest booze in the system, and you repay me with lies?” 

Tamzin takes another sip, but it does nothing to hide her blush. He waits, well aware she won’t be able to resist talking to fill the silence.

“I-- I think I owe you an apology,” she finally says. “That’s all.” 

“Do you?” He resists the urge to ask which apology she means. He has a small list he’d like to hear from her, but that’s beside the point today. 

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” she manages, unable to meet his eyes. “When I-- when I cut your arm. I think I made it weird.” 

Kedric’s smug expression begins to fade, and Tamzin begins to talk faster, sensing his shift in mood.

“You’re a-- You’re Awoken, and a doctor, and you’ve just been doing your job, and I guess I just got confused. You’re so nice to me and I think I thought you might-- I mean, people aren’t usually nice to me unless they want something, and for once I wanted the same thing, or I thought I did.” 

Kedric feels a pang of pity for her, but he doesn’t interrupt her. He just watches her, listens to her. 

She picks up her glass and empties it. 

“I’m not a creep,” she says. “I’m not going to make it weird. We can-- It can just go back to normal. We can pretend I never kissed you, or anything like that. Can’t we?” 

Kedric reaches out and covers her hand with his own, gently tugging the glass away before she shatters it in her nervous grip. 

“It’s easy to forget how naive you are,” he says. “You’ve got this lovely body, and this brilliant mind, but when it comes down to it, you’ve only been around for a few years.” 

Tamzin looks like she might throw up, or just start crying again. 

“I don’t think you’re a creep.” Leaving her guessing at this point would be needlessly cruel, he thinks. “And I wasn’t uncomfortable the way you think I was.” 

Her apparent confusion makes him smile again. He takes a sip of his drink, wondering if he’s steadying his nerves or just stalling for time. 

“I liked it.” Kedric tries to keep it brief and to the point, without being crude. “I didn’t want to take advantage, is all. And I needed… a few minutes to collect myself. That’s all it was.” 

“Take advantage of what?” Tamzin frowns, glancing at the empty glass between them. Kedric snags the bottle again, filling her glass once more. 

“Of you.” He studies her, trying to decide something. “Haven’t you ever liked someone?” 

“Yes,” she answers too quickly. His silence makes her cheeks redden again, and she drops her gaze to her glass. “Not like that, though.” 

“But you’ve had sex, haven’t you?” 

“I guess.” Tamzin shrugs, uncomfortable. “If you can call it that.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kedric leans forward, interested. The low buzz of the medical printer fills the long silence between them. 

“It happened,” she finally says. “It wasn’t that great.” 

He tries not to laugh aloud, afraid she’ll think he’s mocking her.  

“Here’s a tip, then.” He reaches out and brushes a lock of hair behind her ear, close enough to smell the berries and bite of the liquor on her breath. “When you kiss a man like that, and he has to leave suddenly? He’s trying to hide an erection.” 

Tamzin’s face turns red as can be, and he doesn’t suppress his laugh this time. She takes another sip of her drink, unable to hide her mortification. 

“You’re precious,” he informs her. “When you’re not being vicious for the hell of it.” 

“Whatever,” Tamzin sniffs. “You’re just trying to make me uncomfortable.” 

“No. I’m trying to proposition you.” He shrugs, as if it’s the most inconsequential thing in the world. “Your cast will be done in about three minutes. When it is, we can either play cards or something like it, and pretend this didn’t happen.” 

He glances at the printer, pretending he can’t see the disbelief in her eyes. 

“Or we can finish our drinks, and I can take you to bed. And I promise you won’t be saying it wasn’t that great when I’m done.” 

Tamzin blinks. For a moment, he wonders if she’s about to pinch herself. 

Instead, she finishes her drink in another single drawn-out gulp. 

“I don’t want to play cards,” she says. 

When she meets his eyes, he feels a rare, giddy rush of delight. 

“Me neither.” 

He leans forward to kiss her, laughing at the printer’s beep of protest when she moves. 


	45. present day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

Tamzin freezes beneath his first kiss, unsure what to do in response to his  somewhat aggressive certainty. She feels his lips curve into a smile against her own as the filament printer beeps, chuckling softly and placing a hand on her arm to keep it still. 

“Are you scared?” Kedric keeps his voice soft, as though he’s trying not to startle a skittish animal. “You can tell me if you are.” 

“I’m not scared of you,” she replies, a bit too loudly. “I’m not scared at all.” 

He kisses her again. This time he’s gentle, coaxing, almost guiding her into what he wants. She hears the soft sound of a glass being set down before his other hand comes to rest on her neck, drawing her face closer to his own. 

“Don’t tense up your jaw.” He finds her teeth with his tongue, the hinge of her jaw with his thumb. She falters for a moment, but after a few more soft kisses, they both feel the tension ease away. “There we go. Nothing to worry about.” 

The printer hums away beside them, nearly drowning out Tamzin’s soft sighs of pleasure each time Kedric breaks away, gives her a moment to breathe. His hand falls to her side, and as soon as the soft chime marks the completion of her cast, he’s dragging her into his lap, teeth nipping lightly at her throat as her thighs part to straddle his own. 

It feels surreal to go so slowly after all this time. 

Tamzin learns quickly. He tries to calculate when to break off, when to get to the comfort of the bed, but then she scrapes her teeth on his bottom lip.

He feels it like a punch in the gut, grip tightening on her hips until she makes a small noise of pain. 

“Sorry,” he mutters, smoothing his hands over the sore spots. “Just… Just kind of excited.” 

“I can tell,” she replies, tone dry.  

“Ha. I guess you can.” He feels a blush rising in his cheeks, painfully aware of his growing arousal, the barest of fabrics between their skin. “How’s the pain?” 

“Fine,” she says. “Dull.” 

“Good.” He leans in, kissing his way up her unbandaged jaw, down the line of her throat. “I’ve wanted to do this for so long.” 

Tamzin doesn’t reply. She’s still trying to convince herself this is real, that this isn’t a dream or nightmare. 

That he won’t disappear.

Kedric seems to sense her anxiety. His hand moves to her breast, but he doesn’t fondle her. He holds his fingers over her heart, the tips resting on her ribs, feeling it flutter like a frightened bird in her chest. 

“Are you scared?” He asks again. He sounds so sincere, so worried. “Please tell me. I want to know what’s wrong.” 

Tamzin feels the breath catch in her chest at the sincerity in his words. 

“What if I’m dreaming?” 

Her voice is soft, but Kedric can hear her perfectly.

“What if this is all in my head? What if I wake up in the dark again, and this was all some… some Hive game?” 

Kedric draws her into another kiss. 

“You’re not,” he breathes. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere, and you’re staying with me.” 

He repeats it, punctuating the words with his embrace, until she believes it. Until it’s all that matters. 

“Bed?” 

She hums assent, gingerly cradling her arm as they shift, as he climbs off the exam table. He leans to pick her up, derailing himself momentarily with another kiss. 

“Is that for the pain, doctor?” Tamzin smiles as he draws back, but Kedric can hear the breathless edge to the words, undermining her feigned indifference. 

“No,” he replies, claiming her mouth once more, drawing her into his arms. “But this will be.” 

It’s not so far to the bed, but he is dizzy with anticipation, practically falling onto her once he carefully sets her on the mattress. She giggles as he traces kisses down her jaw, her neck, hands sliding beneath the tunic she wears to feel the shape of her sides, her breasts, her delicate ribs, her sharp hips. 

Too fast. He’s going too fast. 

Tamzin watches him, eager, waiting, but he shakes his head. 

“Sorry.” Kedric draws his hands out from beneath her clothes, taking a deep breath. “Sorry. Hold on.” 

She closes her eye as he slips a hand beneath her head, another at her hip. 

“Are you okay?” A gentle hand brushing his cheek, soft fingertips against his skin. 

“I’m perfect,” he replies. He catches her hand in his own, leaving a lingering kiss on her palm. “I just don’t want to rush this.” 

She smiles, watching the way he watches her, the gentle way he folds her fingers, lays her arm back on the bed, lets his hand drift once more to the curve of her waist.   

“How many times have you done this before?” His hands are tangled in her hair, voice soft between them. “I don’t want to go too fast.” 

Tamzin has the lie on her tongue, some flattering exaggeration of her experience, but it fades away as he kisses her, steals the words from her mouth. 

“... Once or twice,” she confesses. “Sort of.” 

“Did you enjoy any of it?” Kedric brushes a soft, sweet kiss across her forehead. The light on his skin makes her feel like they’re underwater. “Once or twice?” 

“Sort of.” She repeats. How else to describe that awful encounter, that disappointing night? “It was... a mistake.” 

“Obviously.” He’s looking at her now, the way people look at sunsets and shooting stars. His expression makes the color rise in her face. “Imagine being lucky enough to have you and wasting the chance.” 

“What about you?” Tamzin wants to deflect this discussion from herself. “How many times have you…?” 

He kisses her burning cheek, and she can feel his smile against her skin. 

“I’ve lived for a very long time,” he murmurs. “And I won’t pretend I’ve lived in chastity. But I hope you won’t hold it against me.” 

He helps her lift her arms, tugging her tunic over her head. She arches her back to help him, and he takes the chance to kiss her between the breasts, grinning deviously at her soft  _ oh _ of surprise. 

“Is there someone waiting for you?” Tamzin asks. “One of the many, I mean.” 

“Yes.” He doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t have to think about it. “Just one.” 

She feels something twist in her chest at those words. He’s reaching into one of the cabinets, palming something before pulling his own shirt off, his pants, letting them fall to the floor, adjusting himself before he crawls back into bed

“Who is she?” It’s a petty, stupid thing to ask, but she wants to know. She doesn’t want to feel for him, not if he’s--

“Hmm. She’s stubborn.” Kedric runs his hands down her sides, lingering at her hips. He hooks his thumbs into the waistband of her pants, drawing them down, teeth scraping his bottom lip as he reveals the bare skin. He’s admiring her body, tracing the line from breast to belly and below with his sky-bright eyes. “Sweet, though, when she wants to be.” 

His hand glides down to her leg, drawing it up. He kisses the inside of her knee, lingering on a bruise, sighing softly.. 

“She’s not as cruel as she’d like to seem. She needs someone to care about her.” 

Tamzin’s finally catching on to his game, but she doesn’t speak yet. Doesn’t interrupt. 

“She’s got hair the color of the sand on Mars,” Kedric continues, lips pressed to the skin of her thigh. “Eyes that are silver like the ice.” 

He nips her skin, exhales against the wet spot, makes her shiver.

“I think I love her,” he concludes. “I just hope she feels the same.” 

He kisses his way up her thigh, up the ladder of scar tissue and stitches, easing himself down to taste her. 

“What…” She starts to ask, but he just slips his arms beneath her thighs, hands spreading across her belly, neatly pinning her down. 

“Relax,” he commands, nipping softly at her secret parts. “I’m going to show you paradise.” 


	46. Chapter 46

It feels strange at first. He kisses her sex,  exploring her folds with tongue and teeth and lips, soft as can be. 

Tamzin breathes. Shifts. Fidgets. 

“Is this supposed to feel good?” 

She sounds more petulant than she means to. Kedric exhales, amused, shifting his fingers across her stomach, sliding them up to find the warm space beneath her breasts, down once more to her hips. 

“You tell me,” he says. “When it does feel good, I mean.”

He nuzzles into her, sucking, licking, searching until he hears that soft inhale of surprise. 

“Here we are,” Kedric murmurs, beginning to work his tongue against her clit. “Like this.” 

Patience is a virtue for Kedric. He’s enjoyed this before. 

For Tamzin, it’s a revelation. 

He traces the strangest patterns against her, repeating the ones that set her nerves alight, make her squirm, humming softly as she edges closer to something she can’t define. 

She can feel her own wetness welling to meet him, and every so often he will withdraw and taste her, breath hot, tongue dipping into her sex, lingering for the novelty of the noises she makes before returning to his work. 

“Are you close?” 

His voice is a soft rumble against her skin, and she feels herself tense at the sensation, a soft _oh_ of surprise escaping before she finds her words.

“Close?” 

He hesitates for a moment, as if this has caught him off guard. Tamzin has a moment of anxiety, fearing that she’s said something wrong, that he’ll stop. 

He does, but it doesn’t feel like a denial. Something closer to a breath, a moment of rest.  

Kedric kisses her between the legs once more before untangling their limbs, easing himself up. He crawls his way up her body, only pausing to kiss the sweat from her skin, until they are face to face. 

She could look into his eyes forever, she thinks. Get lost in the light. 

“Enjoying yourself?” 

He dips his hand between her legs without waiting for a response, finding her wet heat, spreading it.  

“... Yeah,” she says, belated, distracted. “Of course.” 

Kedric huffs, a soft laugh. Lips catch her own, teaching her once more how to enjoy him, how to feel good. 

She likes the way he kisses. Likes the sour taste of herself on his lips. 

“Let me know if it’s uncomfortable.” Kedric breathes the words against her, and she feels his hand moving between them. Stroking himself. “I don’t want to hurt you.” 

“Okay,” she agrees. “I’ll be okay.” 

She feels him nudge against her, hard and thick, finding her slick entrance and beginning to ease inside.

For a moment, she tenses-- Remembers that awful, awkward night, the dreadful feeling of Loch jerking into her, fast and careless. 

He pauses. Waits for her to relax again. 

This is nothing like Lochlan. Nothing like that at all. 

“You can touch me,” he says. “I won’t break.” 

Tamzin returns his soft smile, reaching her hand up to catch his indigo curls. 

“Let me know if it hurts?” She teases, tracing her fingers down his neck, his shoulder. 

Kedric exhales, amused. Watches her expression shift as he eases into her. 

“That’s my line.” 

Her hand drifts to his back as he enters her, grip tightening, breath catching in her throat. She feels his hand moving to cradle the back of her head, the other guiding her leg to rest on his hip.  

“Oh.” Tamzin whimpers as he fills her, matches his satisfied moan with her own as she takes his length. “Th-- That’s--” 

“That’s right,” he whispers. 

He kisses her again, slow, soft, and he feels her body ease beneath him. Tamzin savors this, gingerly returning the kiss, uncertain. She feels something cool and hard as his hips meet her own, an odd shock of temperature that makes her tense around his length. 

He’s patient. Sweet. She can feel his hand taking in the shape of her, feel his hips shift back as he withdraws from their kiss. 

“Breathe for me, beautiful.” 

She breathes. 

Kedric rolls his hips into her, slow, strong, kissing the corners of her mouth, savoring her soft whimpers of surprise and pleasure, the soft, ragged sound of his name on her lips. 

He fucks her sweetly, slowly, his smile warm against her skin when she moans for him. 

“Almost there.” He adjusts his speed, his angle, humming softly as her nails dig into the skin of his back, as her back arches beneath him. 

“Don’t strain, lovely. Don’t strain yourself. I’ll do all…” 

A pulse. A tension. A gasp, a strangled noise of bliss.  

“... the work.” 

Tamzin shudders, panting, clinging to him. He buries his cock into her as she rides out the sensations, scraping his teeth across the skin of her neck, relishing those desperate noises.  

“Kedric,” she says, voice nearly a sob. “Fuck. Kedric.” 

“What?” He asks, voice innocent as can be. He can still feel her orgasm, feel the waves of pleasure in the sweet softness of her body beneath him, around him. “Was that alright?” 

“I--” 

Panting. Words fail her. She’s dazed, still pulsing around him. He moves again, grinning devilishly as she moans, as her hand shakes against his skin. 

“Take your time,” he says. “Enjoy it.” 

Beneath her freckles, her cheeks are flushed with arousal and exertion, gray eye half-shut, red hair spread beneath her on the crisp white sheets. Her chest rises and falls, and he traces his kisses down to her collar, to her chest. 

He doesn’t withdraw. Not yet. He covers her with soft kisses as he waits, tracing her scars with his lips. 

“You’ve never had an orgasm before.” She can feel the smile form against her skin. He’s thrilled with himself. “Here I was worried about virile Guardians, only to discover they don’t know how a clitoris works.”

Tamzin can’t even be annoyed.

“Fuck you.” She closes her eyes, letting the feeling wash over her, the fading waves of her climax making her head spin. “That… That was…” 

“Good?” Kedric smooths her hair, kissing her again, enjoying the soft sound she makes when he does. “Not a mistake?” 

“... Not a mistake.” Tamzin agrees. “Not that.” 

“Good. It’s not over yet.” He eases himself up, out of her. He smiles at her sigh of disappointment. “Don’t worry. Just relax.” 

She can’t help it, she thinks, light and boneless from her first climax. She feels like she’s floating as he repositions, closing her eyes as he lifts her hips, slips a pillow beneath her, settles himself between her thighs. 

She sees the flash of metal as he moves. He has some sort of ring around the base of his cock, what must have been the source of that odd chill. 

It’s out of sight, then, and he’s brushing a soft kiss against the inside of her knee.  

“Tell me if anything pulls,” he says. “We can add another pillow.” 

He adjusts and presses into her. 

Tamzin bites her lip, failing to stifle a moan. 

“Don’t,” Kedric says, voice rough, low. “Don’t be quiet. I want to hear you.” 

“But…” 

She’s reluctant. Embarrassed. 

And yet-- 

She doesn’t bite her lip the next time she cries out, or the next. 

Kedric follows the trail of those sounds, adjusting until each thrust makes her whimper.

He is used to a selfish pleasure, a drive to climax for its own sake. This is something novel. He takes it slow, gentle, restraining himself, finding his heat in the sound of her voice, the shift in her expressions. 

These are the things that push him over the edge, in the end. 

Kedric shudders, gasping, burying himself inside of her as he cums, gritting his teeth as her soft gasps make it clear she can feel it, too. 

Those noises nearly make him forget himself.  He wishes she were healed, wishes she were less delicate. He wants to take her roughly, fuck her, draw those noises out, teach her to be loud. 

Tamzin is exhausted, though. She is flushed, panting, eyes clouded with fatigue and afterglow, hands resting on the bed beside her head. 

Kedric wouldn’t be able to resist pinning them down in other circumstances.

Instead, the sight of her, fatigued and flushed, softens the edge of his lust. 

“Do you want to come again?” He asks, gentle as can be. “Are you close?” 

When she nods, he rocks into her, one hand moving from her hip to her pelvis, covering the soft hair of her sex. His thumb finds her clit, and he strokes her, keeping pace. 

Her whimpers are soft, sweet things, the sort of noise he imagines she makes when she has good dreams. He watches her breaths quicken, her fingers curl into fists, her lips form a lovely _oh_ as she turns her face aside. 

He feels her climax, feels her shudder around his softening cock. He waits for it to fade, stroking her sides, her legs, murmuring praise and soft assurances. 

Once her breathing has steadied, he pulls out, softening, sticky, ignoring the mess. 

“Come here,” he says. “Come on.” 

He lays down beside her, drawing her into his arms, letting her melt against him. It’s a stark contrast to the Tamzin he’s known, stiff and composed and self-contained. 

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, face buried against his neck. 

“For what?” He strokes her hair, smoothing it down, his other hand spread over the small of her back. “You were wonderful.” 

Tamzin doesn’t answer for a long minute. He shifts, ever so slightly, to check on her. 

“... tired,” she says, the movement rousing her. “M’tired.” 

Kedric smiles, pressing a kiss against her hair, savoring the scent of her. 

“That’s alright,” he breathes. “I’ll clean you up. I’ll take care of everything, darling.”


	47. Chapter 47

He drags himself out of bed with the last of his willpower, gently picking up his lover, taking her to the washroom. He leaves her to relieve herself, cleaning off his ring as the shower begins to warm up. When he kneels before her again, he finds she’s dozed off. 

“We’ll make it quick,” he murmurs, kissing her gently, smiling as it stirs her from her sleep. “You’ll feel much better once you’re clean.” 

It’s like washing up a ragdoll, really. She’s weary from her earlier exertions and their coupling, content to doze off against him as he carries her into the shower and settles her on his lap. 

While he has always enjoyed the sensual aspects of cleaning up with his partners, doing it all for her feels strangely more intimate. He washes her like a precious thing, using soft touches and sweet-smelling soap, pressing gentle kisses to her skin when he can’t resist the temptation. 

“Look at you,” he sighs, fingers tracing the bruises and scrapes on her knees and shins. “Did you crawl to the cockpit?” 

Tamzin smirks, and he feels her soft exhale of amusement against his skin. 

“Walked,” she replies, words blurred with fatigue. “Tripped. Just a bit.” 

He runs a hand through her hair, working a bit of oil through it and rinsing the last of the soap away. 

“Trouble,” he says, kissing her on the brow. “Nothing but trouble.” 

They curl up together between clean sheets and soft pillows, finding the precise ways their bodies fit together with soft hums of comfort and inquiry. Tamzin drapes her casted arm across his side, softly kissing his shoulder as she nuzzles against his neck. Kedric falls asleep with his face buried in her hair. 

The radio flickers as the wires brush, but the sound is off, and the call is lost. 

For the first time since Mars, Tamzin doesn’t dream of the Hive. 


	48. Chapter 48

It feels odd to wake up without a rush of fear, without the pain of muscles tight from phantom torment. 

Tamzin stretches her legs, sighing as her cold toes find warmer skin to press against. There’s an arm beneath her pillow, breath stirring her hair, someone holding her-- Someone tracing soft fingers along her side. 

Her eye flutters open, and she finds herself nose to nose with Kedric. His half-lidded eyes are the pale blue of Rigel as he watches her, the light on his skin seeming to spread to her own dull flesh as he touches her. 

“Good morning,” he softly greets her. “How are you feeling, beautiful?” 

Tamzin closes her eye again, taking a deep breath. Taking stock. 

“... Good, I think.” She grimaces as she tries to move her left hand, and he makes a sound of sympathy. “Mostly.” 

“You must’ve been tired.” Kedric leans forward, giving her a gentle kiss on the lips. She lets him linger, lets him draw her body close to him. “You’ve been asleep for nearly a whole day.” 

“Mm... I had the strangest dreams,” she replies. “A blue man called me an idiot, but I let him seduce me anyways.” 

“Did you?” Another kiss, his hand sliding down to cup the slight curve of her ass. “Was it worth the injury to your pride?” 

“Undecided.” Tamzin nuzzles her face against his shoulder once more, breathing in his scent. “It was very nice, though.” 

For a while they simply hold one another, quietly granting affection with soft kisses and playful touches. She makes an odd noise, though, shushing him when he tries to speak again. 

“... It’s quiet,” she says, as if this is something novel. “I can only hear you and the ship.” 

“You mean the ringing went away?” He sounds very pleased. “That’s amazing. Nothing sounds muffled?”

Tamzin hesitates at his specificity, but then she smiles. 

“Yeah. The ringing’s gone.” The sound of wind blowing through old bones and rocks is a sort of ringing, isn’t it? “I can hear just fine now.” 

“Honestly, I’m just… so, so good at my job.” He kisses her softly on the ear, making her giggle as he nips at her lobe. “Maybe it was the sex that did the trick.” 

“Isn’t it a bit early to be so frisky?” Tamzin doesn’t sound dismayed, though. “I don’t mind the cuddling, you know.” 

Kedric laughs, but he eases back into their softer embrace, enjoying the feeling as she gingerly kisses his jaw, his throat, a shy creature tiptoeing along this newfound intimacy. 

“You don’t seem to mind it now,” Kedric muses, thumb following the crease beneath her breast.  

“Mm?” Tamzin rolls onto her back, huffing with amusement when he catches her cast by the wrist and gently lowers it across her abdomen. “Thanks.” 

“Being touched.” He scoots closer, chasing her lips for another kiss. “It seems to bother you, sometimes. You’d never explain why.” 

She responds with a noncommittal noise, though it turns into a breathy laugh as he begins to kiss his way down her throat.

“Really, though.” Kedric nips at her jaw. “What’s the deal?” 

“You’ll think I’m a freak,” she says. “You already think Guardians are all killer drones.” 

He doesn’t voice the thought they both know he’s having. 

_ Well, aren’t you? _

“Come on.” He kisses her on the lips again, again, until she sighs in a way that might signal acquiescence. “Tell me.” 

Tamzin takes her time to string the words together, long enough that he begins to wonder if she’s fallen back to sleep. 

“I’m not… very social,” she finally says, the sentences strangely slow, like a child reading from a jumble of words scrawled on some wall. “I never found a fireteam. A real one, anyways. One I wanted to stay with. One that wanted to keep me.” 

Kedric frowns, but he doesn’t interject. He simply tugs the blanket over to give her more of it, shifts his leg to tuck her ever-cold feet beneath his own hot skin. 

“That’s what they all do. Touch each other. Hugs and leaning and hands and heads on shoulders and laps. It’s easy for them.” 

The sadness he expects is barely present in her voice, a faint tinge on the edges of something else entirely. Disappointment? Confusion? 

“Fireteams?” He covers her casted hand with his own, enjoying her soft smile when she feels it. “Or anyone else at all?” 

Tamzin’s smile falters, though it doesn’t fade. He wonders if he sees bitterness or just the twist of her scars at the corner of her lip.  

“... I’m not sure,” she finally admits. “It’s weird spending time around civilians. They all know what I am. They act differently when a Guardian’s around.” 

“So just other Guardians.” He doesn’t want to discourage her, derail her. “They’re all physical with each other and you feel left out.” 

She shakes her head slightly, opening her eye to stare at the ship’s ceiling, the dim hull above the bed. 

“Not left out. I can’t feel left out if I don’t want to be part of them, can I?” 

“Is that a rhetorical question, or do you want an answer?” Kedric arches one eyebrow, hoping it’s the latter. 

“Rhetorical,” Tamzin sighs. “I don’t feel left out, though. I don’t know the word. Frustrated, maybe? Impatient. Wondering where my people are. Why nobody wants to be my people.” 

“How... “ Kedric tries to find the best way to phrase the question, coming up quite short. “Well, I want to ask how old you are, but that sounds wrong, doesn’t it?” 

“I know what you mean.” She frowns, thinking. “Just shy of two years, before-- before I came here.” 

“And you’ve been alone for that whole time?” 

It’s bizarre to consider, coming from his own culture, a place where physical expression of affection is so commonplace. It also puts so many odd moments into context from these past months. The way she’d flinch and grimace, tense up, avoid looking at him as he treated her. 

“I had Rho,” she replies a bit too defensively. “I wasn’t alone.” 

_ Just touch starved, _ he doesn’t say. 

“Sorry.” He kisses her again, lingering until he feels her tension ease. “I just want to know everything about you.” 

“I’m not mad,” Tamzin reassures him. “I’m just not used to people asking the sorts of things you do.” 

“You’re not used to a lot of things,” he points out. “And you get mad about most of them.” 

“You’re exaggerating.” Her smile is a bit sheepish, all the same. “I wasn’t mad last night.” 

“That’s not how I remember it.” He frowns, feigning thoughtfulness. “I seem to remember someone howling like a Dreg because she couldn’t get her way.” 

“I wasn’t howling. And I mean  _ after _ that.” 

“Oh?” Kedric lets his hand leave hers, gliding down her stomach, through the hair of her pelvis, pausing right before nestling into her folds. “When I was here?” 

“I wasn’t howling,” Tamzin repeats. “You know what I mean.” 

“We’ll debate that later.” He slips his hand lower, grinning as his fingers meet wet heat. “I think you really do like being touched.” 

“Shut up.”  

He does, but only to taste her skin once more.  


	49. Chapter 49

Tamzin’s waiting patiently in the warm spot he’s left behind, face buried in his pillow. She hardly stirs as he crawls back in beside her. 

“Tired?” He asks, giving her a kiss on the cheek as he crawls over her to the other side. 

“No. Just relaxing.” She stretches out, turning toward him with a yawn. “What did you need so urgently?” 

“This.” 

He shows her the ring, ready to put it on and get to the fun part, but she takes it from his hand with a curious expression. 

“What’s this for?” She slips her fingers into it, turning it over a few times. “I saw you wearing it last night.” 

He never thought naivete could be such a turn on. He’s not sure if he enjoys it for itself, or because it’s this fiery girl displaying it. 

“That’s a cock ring,” he explains, enjoying her smile at the words. “It helps me last longer so I can make sure you finish, and makes it feel a lot better for me when I do.” 

“Weird.” She offers it back to him, but he doesn’t take it. 

“Do you want to put it on?” Kedric asks. “Get a feel for it?” 

Tamzin looks suspiciously at him, waiting for a punchline, but he just smiles patiently, flopping down on the bed beside her. 

“Sure,” she finally says. “You just... put it on, right?” 

He nods, watching her nervously bite her lower lip as she rolls over and reaches for him. She hesitates, but then her delicate fingers are lifting his not quite flaccid dick, gingerly slipping the cool metal over the head and sliding it down. 

“It’s a little big,” she says, faltering. “Won’t it fall off?” 

“The balls go in too,” he informs her. “You just have to push them through.” 

She’s starting to blush again, and he places a hand on her neck, stroking her cheek as she tries to puzzle it out. Her hand is still trembling, and he can tell it takes some effort to steady it. 

Kedric presses a kiss to her forehead as she slips her fingers behind his sack, gently pushing it through the metal and nestling the ring comfortably at the base of his cock. 

“Like that?” She glances up at him, uncertain. 

“Just like that,” he confirms. “See?” 

Tamzin frowns. “It’s still a little loose,” she points out. “Even once you’re hard, won’t it…?” 

“You really are a Warlock,” he laughs. “Do you want to do it yourself to see, or should I do it?” 

“I’ve never--” She’s blushing again. “I’ve never used my mouth before.” 

“And you’re not going to start today.” He brushes his thumb across her lips, looking at her face as though he would commit her to memory. “You can use your hand, if you want to. The one you didn’t break.” 

She wrinkles her nose at the mention of her injury, but she carefully takes hold of him, so lightly it can hardly be called a grip at all. 

“Like this?” She strokes it, trying to imitate the motions he used last night. 

“Almost.” Kedric smiles, reaching down to adjust her hand, the other fumbling for his lube in a nearby cubby. “Put a little of this on, and then cup your hand like… like you’re racking a shotgun. Gently, though. And the thumb can go on the tip, once you feel like mixing it up.” 

She learns quickly, he must admit. WIth a few muttered directions for how the strokes ought to be, she’s drawing a long sigh of pleasure from his lips. 

“Okay,” he says, putting his hand over hers. “Okay, that’s enough for now.” 

He doesn’t want to finish too quickly. Not when she’s hardly started. She releases him, tilting her head to one side as she examines her handiwork. 

“Nice and snug,” she remarks, running a finger along the ring. “What a neat trick.” 

“Has your curiosity been sated?” Kedric smirks, lifting a hand to brush back her hair. “Or can I show you why I got it?” 

“Never sated.” Tamzin replies. When he cups her cheek in his hand, she nips at his thumb. “Only temporarily subdued.” 

“I hope that applies to more than facts.” The sensation of her tongue on his skin makes his cock ache in anticipation. “The things I want to do to you, beautiful.”

She gives him a smile that shows her teeth. He gives in to temptation. 


	50. Chapter 50

There’s no way to tell if the magic in these days come from the movement of their bodies or their whispered words. 

Perhaps it’s everything. 

The bedding is a shroud around them, an island of warmth and the scent of their sweat amid the cold air of the ship. Sometimes the only light is from his eyes, his skin, and she becomes like him when he touches her, as if she’s been consumed by the stars and reformed just for this. 

They share secrets while they’re skin to skin, soft confessions answered between whimpers of pleasure, gasps of desire, low murmurs of sympathy. They memorize one another like treasured stories, finding the ways they fit together to make themselves fall apart. 

“I wish this could last forever.” Tamzin’s voice is almost a whimper, a breathless declaration.  

Kedric resists the urge to laugh, savoring instead the sound she makes as his tongue presses against her ass, the tip slipping between tight muscle to make her inhale sharply. 

“This specifically,” he finally asks, nipping at the base of her spine. “Or us?” 

She arches her back, and he adjusts his fingers accordingly, licking his way to her entrance once more. His fingers are slick with her, moving easily. He curves to find her g-spot when she starts to speak, enjoying the way her breath hitches, her voice falters. 

“Us,” she finally manages. “All of this.” 

He wants to believe it can, if things stay this way. She’ll continue to heal, and even when they tire of this bed, of this fantasy world, they can find a new place, a new life to make their own. 

Kedric likes the way her eyes widen when he tells her about the Reef, about the beauty and wonder of his home. He feels an ache she can’t comprehend when she tells him about her awakening, the empty places and lonely pain. 

It doesn’t have to exist here. None of it does. 

“How does that feel?” 

Kedric’s voice is a purr against her ear, breath tickling enough to make her smile. 

“Like you’re nibbling on my ear.” She doesn’t open her eye. “How is it supposed to feel, doctor?” 

“You’ll see,” he hums, thoughtful, tracing his fingers over her side in a lazy, curving line. “That’s the fun of it.” 

He nibbles her throat, and she can feel him grin at the slight hitch in her breath. 

“Too easy.” Kedric kisses his way down her body, an inch at a time. “Don’t fall asleep on me.” 

Tamzin isn’t sure she can make that promise. She’s lying on her side in their bed, tangled in the sheets, half-dozing in the ship’s artificial twilight. 

“Just wake me up if I do.” 

He makes a soft noise of assent, lips brushing the soft skin beneath her breast. He pauses, then scrapes his teeth there, and she can feel his smile when she mumbles a protest. 

“Hey.” He pauses, waiting. “When can my bandages come off?” 

Kedric hums thoughtfully. She bites her lip as he does the same to her hip, lingering for a moment before starting down her leg. 

“Soon,” he replies. “I can check after this.” 

“After what?” Tamzin tries to roll onto her back, and he lifts her leg to accommodate, planting a soft kiss on the back of her thigh. “Kedric.” 

“I’m doing an exam.” He smiles up at her, perfectly devilish. “Doctor’s orders.” 

“With your mouth?” She shoves him lightly with a foot, but he just catches her ankle, bending low to nip her behind the knee. 

“Finding what feels good.” He runs his hand up her leg, finding her heat, smiling against her skin. “I want to hear you say my name.” 

“Kedric.” She tries to sound disapproving, but he’s smiling, stroking her, mouth moving back up her leg. “Kedric, please?” 

He sighs. Pauses. 

She tries not to shift her hips into the pressure of his hand. 

“I’ll have to get up and wash my hands,” he says, as if he’s warning her. “It’ll ruin the mood.” 

“Impossible.” Tamzin smiles as he starts crawling off the bed, basking in her victory. “Nothing could ruin  _ this  _ mood.”


	51. Chapter 51

Kedric tries not to think about the future these days. He can’t keep his mind from drifting, though, when he’s disinfecting his hands, when he’s staring at the radio he finally got around to reinstalling. 

Talking about the City inevitably leads to the beginning of a spiral for Tamzin, those cascading thoughts of death and destruction and her own mortality. He’s spoken of the war once since the day they first slept together, some fleeting, unthinking words. 

Getting her out of her own head was much more difficult without a broken bone to reset. 

“Okay,” he says, making his way back to the living space of the ship. “Lie down, sit up. Get comfortable.” 

“You sit first,” Tamzin says, patting the bed. “Come on.”  

“If you insist.” He shakes his head, climbing up and sitting on his feet. “Head in my lap, then.” 

“No.” Tamzin crawls to him, hands on his thighs as she gives him a kiss. “I’m going to sit up. Hold on.” 

Kedric holds his hands up to avoid contaminating them, letting out a soft  _ woof _ of air as she shoves him back, making him lean against the pillows so she can straddle his lap. 

“This isn’t sanitary,” he informs her, tone even as she takes hold of him, stroking him from half-erect to something more substantial. “And your muscles won’t last long in this position.” 

“They’ll last long enough.” With a little guidance, she settles onto him, sighing happily. That noise is enough to make him harder, and her smile makes it clear she can feel his excitement. 

“Do you-- Do you want the bandages off or not?” He clears his throat, resisting the urge to take her by the waist. 

“I do.” She leans forward as if to kiss him, but instead traces his lips with her fingers. He opens his mouth ever so slightly, letting her slip them in. He licks their shared taste from her skin, sucking lightly, humming when she rolls her hips in response. “Unless you’re too distracted.” 

“You’re a brat,” he says. He catches her face in his hands, doing his best to ignore her cheeky grin. “Look up.” 

She does as she’s told. He gently peels away the material, exhaling slowly as though he’ll breathe away all the damage beneath. 

“The edges-- The edges have healed nicely.” 

Kedric closes his eyes, taking a breath. Steadying himself. 

Tamzin shifts, her smile devilish. 

“No moving.” It takes all his willpower not to put his hands on her hips and slip his fingers into her perfect mouth. “Stop that, or I’ll leave them on.” 

She settles back with a sigh, feigning disappointment even as Kedric inhales sharply.

He needs to focus. He takes a moment to breathe. 

“Okay. Okay.” He starts lifting the edges of her bandage again, gentle, careful not to pull on any part of her reconstructed skin. “This will be over in a minute if you can just--”

She flinches as he comes to the eye, and he feels her tense around his cock. 

“Behave. Sorry.” He soothes the spot, wondering how she convinced him to do this. “Almost there.” 

“Will I be able to see?” Tamzin sounds concerned, suddenly. Frightened. 

“That’s not the sort of question I wanted to answer with you sitting on me,” he replies, slightly sardonic. “We’ll find out in a moment. Just take it easy.” 

The dressing comes away in his hand. 

Here she is. Tamzin, skin pale, marred with livid scar tissue and the tiny stipples from stitches, lashes short where they have only just begun to grow back. 

She begins to open her eyes, but she falters. Nerves? Pain? 

“Blink.” He rests his hands on her hips, steadying her. “Take it slow.” 

“What if it won’t open?” Tamzin whispers. “What if I’m blind?” . 

“Darling. It’s okay.” He kisses her, soft and sweet. “Just open your eyes for me.” 

It’s bright and blue like the midday sky, and he is the first thing it beholds. 


	52. Chapter 52

The Tamzin in the mirror is a wan thing, pale and tired and marred. She lifts a hand to her face, and the girl in the mirror does the same, fingers running lightly over skin with no sensation. 

“Well.” 

She closes her eyes, noting the faint ache at the back of her new eye, mismatched and mechanical and unused to the strain of sight.

“I guess it’s a good thing I’m not vain.” 

Kedric makes a noise like a laugh, but he falters when he realizes she’s not joking. She opens her eyes to watch him in the mirror, to study his concerned expression.

He wraps his arms around her waist, bending to kiss her on the shoulder. 

“I think you’re beautiful,” he says, meeting her eyes in the reflection. “You are beautiful. A few scars won’t change that.” 

“You have to say that.” Tamzin squeezes her eyes shut again. “I don’t care, though. Mostly. You don’t have to stroke my ego.” 

Kedric’s kissing his way up the back of her neck now. He’s still hard, she realizes as he brushes against her. She feels a faint twinge of guilt for aborting their tryst for the sake of seeing her new face. 

“Let me show you,” he murmurs, teeth scraping across her skin. “Is your back hurting?” 

“No?” Tamzin frowns, unsure what he’s angling for. He’s taken her by the hips, though, turning her around, picking her up and putting her on the edge of the sink. “I can’t see the mirror.” 

“You’ll see it in a minute.” Kedric hums thoughtfully, brushing a quick kiss across her lips. “Put your arms around my neck, please.” 

She sighs dramatically, but she does as he asks. She’s unable to suppress a smile as he slides his hands up her thighs, following the curve of her ass before moving down to part them, to put her knees on his hips. 

“On the sink?” She raises one eyebrow. “Really?” 

“No.” He’s moving his hands beneath her now, and with hardly any effort, he’s lifted her up, turning as if he’ll walk out the door with her. “Up we go.”  

Instead, he presses her against it. Presses a kiss against her lips. 

Presses himself inside of her.

Tamzin’s sound of surprise fades to a content little moan, smothered by his kiss. He leans into her, rocking his hips until he’s settled, until she’s taken his full length.

“Can you see the mirror?” He keeps his voice soft. He’s shifting his grip on her, moving her to sit a bit higher against the door. He can feel her case, heavy and hard against the back of his neck, her other hand resting in his curls. 

“Yeah.” Tamzin rolls her shoulders back, and he helps her shift, sit up a bit higher against the door. “Now I can.” 

“Good.” Kedric leans against her, supporting her as he slips an arm beneath one leg, hooking her knee over his forearm. “Now, where were we?” 

He lifts her knee and eases further into her, the cool metal of his ring pressed between them.  

“Right about here,” she finally replies, voice a sigh of contentment. “Sort of like this.” 

Kedric hums thoughtfully, shifting his hips back, withdrawing from her. He likes to watch the way her face changes as he moves inside her, the slight flutter of those lashes, the subtle hitch of her breath. 

“Good.” He thrusts into her, biting his own lip. “Let’s get some color into those cheeks.”  

He fucks her sweet and slow, drawing it all out, watching as her eyes drift from his face to the mirror behind him, to the sight of their bodies. He thrusts, and he sees the faint blush of arousal blooming in her cheeks. 

“You like to watch yourself.” 

Kedric can’t quite hide his satisfaction. Her eyes are locked on the mirror behind him, her moving, now hand knotted in his hair. He leans forward, whispering against her ear, hand tightening on the curve of her ass. 

“Do you know how beautiful you look when you’re being fucked?” 

“Kedric…” She shivers, closing her eyes. “Come on.” 

“You are. You blush like a virgin,” he continues, catching her earlobe between his teeth. “And the sounds you make--” 

He moves, pausing to savor her whimper of pleasure. 

“When I’m inside you, you say my name like a prayer.” 

“Don’t-- Don’t be dramatic,” Tamzin protests. “I don’t blush.” 

But she is blushing, and her eyes are back on that mirror, taking it all in, new face and new eye and his broad, blue back, the toned muscles of his ass defined with each thrust. 

“Do you like what you see?” Kedric is breathless, but he isn’t slowing down. “Tell me, beautiful.” 

“So needy.” She laughs aloud. “Do you want to hear about how good you look?” 

He cuts off her laugh with a kiss, and for a while, they are speechless together. 

Tamzin whispers her answer when his thrusts become desperate, his breaths quick, trying and failing to hold himself back. 

“I do like what I see,” she breathes against his ear. He groans, slamming into her, and she feels him shudder. “I like it very much.” 

He climaxes with a low cry, burying his face in the curve of her neck. Tamzin laughs, a breathy, relieved sound, stroking his hair, closing her eyes. 

“You did that on purpose,” he says, somehow managing a breathless, accusatory tone. “I was going to let you finish first.” 

Tamzin just smiles, half-lidded eyes watching their reflection, his heaving shoulders, his trembling hand against the door. 

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” 

Kedric turns his head to kiss her scarred cheek, lingering on the heat of her blush. She feels his lips curl into a smile against the half-numb skin.  

“Your circulation is wonderful,” he murmurs. “You’re as red as a Legionary.” 

“Oh, shut up.” Tamzin turns her face away, laughing. “As if you can talk, blue man.” 

He kisses her until she doesn’t have the breath to laugh, fingers working until he earns her desperate climax, her gasps of pleasure sweet against his lips. 


	53. Chapter 53

Kedric reconnects the radio as they run low on supplies, speaking in low tones in a language she can’t understand. 

“It’s Eliksni,” he explains, brow furrowing at the question. “Haven’t you ever heard Fallen speak before?” 

Tamzin shakes her head, watching him open cubbies and count supplies. 

“No. I mean, I’ve heard them. But they just sort of… you know. Chatter and screech like animals.” Kedric turns around to stare at her like she’s an idiot. “What? They do!”  

“I thought Warlocks were supposed to be educated.” He doesn’t sound amused. “I know all you do is shoot them, but they’re a civilization. They have languages and history and culture just like you do.” 

“I don’t have a history or culture,” Tamzin replies, tone dry. “I was just brought back to protect people who do.” 

“You’re being depressing on purpose.” He turns back to his chores with a sigh. “There’s a settlement on the Shore, about a week out. Might even be able to get off the ship and stretch your legs.” 

Time is slow out here, and each drawn out hour is another opportunity for fear and despair to creep into her thoughts. Kedric watches, waiting, but she doesn’t spiral, doesn’t weep. She just reaches for his hand, or rolls over to press against his side, holding onto him as if he’ll protect her from all the terrible things in the world. 

He wishes he could shield her. He knows he’d die trying, if it came down to it. 

Tamzin sits in the cockpit and listens to the radio, sometimes, when the nights feel too long, when she can get up without disturbing him. She stares at nothing, or closes her eyes, and listens to the faint sounds of the end of her world. 

When he wakes up alone, Kedric is gripped with fear that she’s gone, that she’s left, that she was never here at all. 

“Tamzin?” 

Sometimes, she’s awake, and comes when she hears her name. She sits on the edge of the bed, and he draws her down, easing the tension of their fear with soft words and sweet kisses. 

Sometimes, she’s asleep up there, feet tucked beneath her and head resting against the seat. He comes to her and gathers her up, takes her back to bed, curling up around her as if that will protect her from all the pain on the other side of those distress calls. 

She likes to wake up like that. Likes the feeling of his arms around her, her head tucked beneath his chin, their legs tangled as they stretched out in their sleep. 

“Please don’t leave me,” he breathes one morning, words muffled against her hair. “Stay with me.” 

Tamzin doesn’t know what to say to that. Strangely, the words make her want to cry. 

“I want to,” she says. “I wish I could.” 

She doesn’t say that there is no forever for her, if the Light doesn’t come back. She doesn’t say that if it does, she’ll have a duty, a place to be, a city to protect-- 

If there's a city left at all. 


	54. Chapter 54

There’s chatter on the radio about a machine that can destroy the sun. 

Tamzin stares at nothing, trying to imagine the end of Sol. A bright, silent flare? Darkness and cold? 

She shivers. A drop of sweat is crawling down her throat, tickling as it goes, and she scratches the trail with her too-long nails. 

“Look at me.” Kedric is kneeling beside her, a frown tugging the corners of his mouth.

“Mm?” She turns her eyes to him, wondering how long he’s been there. 

Kedric doesn’t explain himself. He just slips a hand beneath her fringe, pressing his palm to her brow and holding it there for a long moment. 

“You’ve got a fever,” he finally says, brushing her hair from her face, tucking it behind one ear. “Do you have chills?” 

“No.” Tamzin shakes her head. Kedric waits, raising an eyebrow as another shiver betrays her. “What? It’s cold.” 

“You’re burning up.” Her lover hauls himself to his feet with a sigh, rummaging through several compartments before returning. “Swallow these. Give me your hand.” 

Her quiet compliance with his exam alarms Kedric, but he doesn’t let it show. He pricks her finger, submitting her blood for the ship’s AI to analyze before taking her to their bed like a sick child. 

“I’m fine.” Tamzin sighs, mumbling as he props her up on the pillows. “It’s just a chill. That’s all.” 

He just sighs, tugging the lightest sheet up to her chin and going to see the test results. 

“It’s not a virus,” he informs her when he returns, a wet cloth and a small packet in hand.. “It’s not bacterial. And your blood count-- Well, you should be kept in an airtight room, but that wouldn’t cause a fever now.” 

He drapes the cloth over her forehead, reaching for another cup of water that she clumsily bats away. 

“I’m cold.” Tamzin complains. “And I don’t know why any of that matters.” 

Kedric forces himself to breathe before crawling into the bed beside her. With a few grunts, they’re curled up together, her head resting on his chest, her thin limbs burning like coals against his skin. 

“Your body is creating heat to fight infection, but that heat makes you feel cold,” he explains, extricating her broken arm from between them. “And I think something got loose when you broke this again.” 

Tamzin watches dully as he opens the packet, tugging out a syringe and tossing the crumbled paper onto the floor. He taps it expertly until the bubbles of air float to the tip, vanishing as he removes the cap and depresses the plunger until liquid squirts out. 

“What’s that?” She frowns as he presses it against her skin, flinching as it sinks in. “Ow.”

“An antibiotic,” he replies, holding her arm steady until the syringe is empty. “In theory, it’ll help your body fight this off.”

“Oh.” Tamzin closes her eyes as he withdraws the needle. She can hear him snapping the cap back onto the thing, a soft click as he sets it somewhere.  

“That should help,” he finally says. “Your tests make it hard to pinpoint the issue, but if this works, we’ll know that was it. A fever usually means there’s an infection, and that means you should have more white blood cells to fight it, but…” 

Tamzin doesn’t interrupt his thoughtful pause, and he doesn’t seem to notice she’s practically asleep. 

“You don’t have enough white blood cells to fight anything,” Kedric finally says. “I don’t know if that’s a Guardian thing or a you thing. It probably doesn’t matter when you’ve got the Light, but without it, you’re vulnerable to all sorts of infections.” 

“Babe?” 

Kedric blinks at the rare term of endearment. 

“... Yeah?” 

“I don’t really care.” She brushes a soft kiss against his collarbone to soften the words. “You’re going to bore me to death.” 

“You’re so rude.” He’s chuckling, though, letting his head fall back on the pillows with weary sigh. “You’ll feel better soon. Those tablets will help get the fever down.” 

Tamzin makes a dissatisfied noise. Kedric holds her until she falls asleep, keeping a silent, anxious watch until the flush of illness subsides and her pale skin no longer burns against his own. 


	55. Chapter 55

“So you don’t mind getting shot,” Kedric says, failing to keep the incredulity out of his voice. “But a needle makes you squeamish?” 

Tamzin glares, willing herself not to flinch as he slips the needle into her skin. She looks a bit green, he notes. With a smirk, he moves his hand to block her view of the injection site. 

“Who said I don’t mind getting shot?” Tamzin scowls. “I don’t like either. I don’t have any use for needles.” 

Kedric withdraws the empty syringe smartly, pressing a piece of cotton over the pinprick of welling blood. 

“Well, it’s working.” He lays a hand on her forehead, her cheek, eyes drifting to the scanner on his wrist. “Your fever’s staying down and you’re as charming as ever.” 

“Charming enough for you,” she retorts. 

He just smiles and leans in for a kiss.  

“Legs?” 

“Fine.” 

“Arm?” 

“As good as it can be.” 

“Eye?” 

Tamzin blinks a few times, squinting thoughtfully. 

“...A bit sore. Dry.” 

“Drops.” He produces them, and she tilts her head back to let him administer them. “Looks like we’re ready to disembark.” 

The port he’s chosen is sparse, a tiny settlement of Awoken and Fallen hidden in the valley of a nameless rock in the Tangled Shore. A few unarmed Dregs linger on the outskirts, warily eyeing the newcomers as they approach the medley of scrap-built homes and salvaged structures. 

Something about the open air makes Tamzin’s stomach turn in a way that would make her sick if she’d eaten recently. She picks at the sleeve of her borrowed clothes as they walk, eyes darting between each distant face, each crude structure, the uneven lines that serve as a horizon in this skyless place. 

Her ears strain for the grunts of Cabal or hiss of Hive. She tries not to imagine the grip of a rough paw or the bellow of a legionary spotting a Guardian to kill. 

Kedric takes her hand in his and squeezes, reassuring. He feels the extra weight she puts on him, slowing his pace to avoid tiring her. 

“It’s okay,” he tells her. “We’re just like everyone else here.” 

She doesn’t ask what he means. They’re all adrift, she thinks, refugees in a system that’s constantly in chaos.

“Let’s get what we need and get out of here.” Tamzin swallows, trying to ignore the tension growing in her chest. “Please.” 

“That’s what we’re doing, lovely. In and out. Just a walk and some sightseeing.” Kedric gives her a reassuring smile. “Nobody but settlers here, see? Nobody wants to hurt us.” 

“We wouldn’t know,” she replies, voice low. “All it takes is a scan. Any Ketch or Warship could turn this rock into dust before anyone knew they were there.”

“Tamzin…” 

She can see his mind working as he tries to formulate a response to that, something that will reassure her. In the end, he just shakes his head.

“We’ll be fine. We’re not going to be here long enough for anything to happen.” 

He’s right, of course. They go to one building, then another, Kedric chatting up the sellers as they sort out what he needs and what it costs. Tamzin stands back, a quiet, watchful shadow, eyes following her lover when she isn’t glancing anxiously at the door. 

“Is this a good spot?” Kedric helps the woman lift a crate, smiling at her huff of exertion. “Seems out of the way of any trouble.” 

“Oh, mostly.” She starts counting out his currency, tapping in a few numbers on a small handheld. “We’ve lost a few to accidents, but we’re too small to be worth the trouble for bandits, and the rest…” 

The woman trails off, eyes meeting Tamzin’s. She tugs her cowl forward self-consciously, painfully aware of how much she must stand out in this place. Her hair feels like a beacon, her earthy Human coloring screaming _outsider_ among the blue complexions of the locals. 

“They’re focused on other things,” the woman finishes, settling on a very diplomatic way of saying the Cabal are busy occupying Earth and hunting down Guardians. “Until things are back in order on the Reef, we’ll be alright here.” 

As they keep talking, Tamzin finds her mind wandering in unpleasant ways.Her legs are aching. She half wishes the pain was worse, at least bad enough to derail this train of thought.

  _Accidents,_ the woman said. She picks at that word like a scab, unable to draw back from how casually she mentioned fatal mishaps, little unexpected things that simply ended a life.

Once she’d seen a crate fall and crush a small child in the market. A ship had shifted on the dock, killing a mechanic. A man had collapsed from an aneurysm in the Tower, and she’d heard the civilians say he’d been dead before he hit the ground. 

 _Accidents happen,_ she thinks. _All it takes is one accident and he’s gone forever._

She isn’t sure how she gets outside. One moment she’s feeling dizzy, a pressure building in her chest. The next, she’s standing out in the open air, a hand against the wall to steady herself, the hard edge of her cast digging into her sternum as she clutches her chest and gasps for air.

It’s been a long time since she had one of these attacks. She wonders if they were this bad back then, when she had her Ghost, when she knew she couldn’t _really_ die. 

If she dies right now, dies like this, she’ll die for good. 

Her head is spinning, her heart racing, lungs aching for a breath she can’t take. She ought to be near Kedric, she thinks. She should be nearby in case something happens. 

What would she do, though? What _could_ she do, in a state like this? 

“Tamzin. Darling, come here.” 

Kedric, a familiar shape in this wasteland. He draws her into his arms, holding her tightly, letting her bury her face against his shoulder. 

“I’m right here, lovely. It’s okay. Deep breaths, darling, just a few deep breaths.” 

Her hand is still pressed to her chest between them. She can hear her wheezing gasps. She can feel her lungs burning. 

“Come on. Deep breaths.” He strokes her hair as he repeats the words. “Just take in a big, slow breath for me, lovely.” 

“I can’t,” she finally manages to protest, a ragged wheeze of fear. “I can’t breathe.” 

“You can.” Kedric insists. “If you can talk, you can breathe. I promise.” 

She can’t. She can’t. 

He draws back, bending slightly to kiss her lightly on the lips. 

“Breathe for me, lovely.” 

The words have a startling, strange familiarity. 

She can’t breathe-- 

No. She can. 

She can, just a little. 

“There. There you go.” Kedric kisses her again when she finally drags in that breath. “One breath at a time, beautiful.”  

Tamzin feels his lips curve into a smile when she lets out a long exhale, his sigh of relief as he feels her easing into his embrace. 

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he reminds her. “You’re going to be okay. See?” 

“No, we won’t.” Tamzin begins, shaking her head. “We can die--”

“Breathe in again,” he interrupts her. “With me.” 

She does, but it doesn’t make the thoughts go away. 

“We can both die,” she finally whispers. “We’d die and we wouldn’t come back.” 

Kedric gives her a funny look, one she isn’t sure she wants to read. 

“People die all the time,” he replies. “They always have. But we live before we do. Right now, right here?”

He lifts one hand to gesture at the ragtag settlement around them. 

“This is the safest, happiest place in the system.” 

Tamzin’s brow furrows, confusion throwing yet another wrench in her spiral of anxiety.  

“Happiest?” 

“That’s right.” Kedric kisses her again, hand resting softly where her shoulder meets her throat. She can feel her heart beating rapidly, pulse fluttering in terror beneath his touch. “Even on this piece of rock in the middle of nowhere. Anywhere we’re together, anywhere I can hold you like this, is the best of places.”

If she were feeling well, she’d scoff at his cliche declarations. As it is, she returns his kiss, a furtive, anxious gesture, as if she’s not sure he’s real.  

“I want to go back to the ship,” she finally whispers. “I’m scared.” 

Her raw vulnerability tugs at his heart, but he knows he can’t let her retreat so easily. He studies her expression for a long minute, brushing her hair back with his fingers in the same sort of steady rhythm he uses to soothe her to sleep. 

“We’re going to finish getting our supplies, darling.” Kedric keeps his tone soft, trying to blunt the edge of his refusal. “And we’re going to be just fine while we do.” 

Tamzin is too weary to argue, though she doesn’t bother to hide her flair of indignant anger. 

Kedric just smiles, kissing her tenderly on the forehead before guiding her back inside.


	56. Chapter 56

There’s an odd disturbance on the sensors, some distant concussion from Mercury’s general vicinity. Kedric frowns at the readings before flipping through a few channels on the radio. 

“What’s wrong?” Tamzin’s body is still bed-warm as she leans against him, arms wrapped around his chest, chin on his shoulder. “Broadcasts?”

“No.” He turns the knob a few more times, puzzled by the overwhelming silence.”Nothing at all.” 

“Weird.” Tamzin sighs, turning her face to nibble on his earlobe. “Are you worried?” 

“I’m not sure.” He shivers as she scrapes her teeth across his skin. “Obviously you aren’t.” 

“Do you really want to have that fight again?” Tamzin doesn’t sound as if she’d be bothered either way. “We can’t do anything about it. You won’t let me go be a good soldier. So why bother?”

Kedric can’t argue with that logic, though he feels oddly bothered by her newfound indifference. 

“Want to play cards?” She’s tracing a trail of kisses down his throat, finding the softest spots to use her teeth. “I’m bored.” 

“You’re always bored,” he points out. “And you don’t want to play cards.” 

Tamzin sighs and straightens up. “Fine. I’ll go read a book.” 

“I didn’t say--”

“No, it’s fine.” She pushes his head aside lightly as his chair turns, stepping back to the door. “You must be worn out after all these weeks. Getting tired of the same thing.” 

“Aren’t you cold?” Kedric can’t suppress a smirk at the sight of her naked body, scars and curves a temptation she’s deliberately displaying as she leans against the frame. He notes that she’s favoring her left leg again, though it doesn’t detract from the scene. “We did bring clothes for you.” 

“I thought you’d keep me warm,” she shrugs. Her breasts shift with the movement, her nipples pert in the cool air. “And I didn’t want to slow you down.” 

“Mm-hm.” Kedric turns the chair a bit more, extending a hand to her. “Come here, lovely. I’ll warm you up.” 

She feigns reluctance, hand reaching for his own lazily. He tugs her onto his lap with no such hesitation. 

“You’re a brat.” He cups one breast as he speaks, the other arm wrapped firmly around her waist. He strokes her nipple with his thumb, enjoying her little shiver at the stimulation. “Most people are quite happy to fuck once a day, you know.” 

“Are they?” She lets him catch her lips for a kiss, hand tangling in his hair. “They must not be fucking you.” 

“Flatterer.” Kedric grins. “How are your hips feeling?” 

Tamzin frowns, momentarily confused. “Fine?” 

“Good.” He kisses her once more before sliding a hand down to her leg, shifting her to sit with her back to his chest. “Let me show you how to loosen them up.”  


	57. Chapter 57

“We need to talk about what happens next,” he says. “What we’re going to do.” 

Tamzin sighs, uncertain why he’s bringing this up now. They’re back in their bed now, where it’s such a strange, serious topic. They’re each still savoring the bliss of the other’s body, the taste and smell of their--

“Beloved.” The word is sweet on his tongue, sweet as the kiss that follows. “We can’t drift like this forever.” 

“Why not?” It’s a childish question. She knows it. But the idea of a time and place beyond this feels like an impossibility, some horror story full of unseen peril. “What else is there?” 

Kedric looks into her eyes as if he’s searching for something. She wonders, not for the first time, if he can read her mind, if his bright blue eyes can see right into her soul. 

“We can find a settlement,” he begins. “We can go back to my sisters. Make a home for ourselves.” 

“I wouldn’t be allowed, would I?” She frowns, absently caressing the line of his jaw with her thumb. “I’m not Awoken.”  

“I don’t know.” He plays with her hair as he considers it. “I’m sure I could petition for something. If not, oh well. We can find somewhere else.” 

Tamzin doesn’t speak. She drapes an arm over his side, exhaling slowly. She still gets tired so easily, and the fever hasn’t been helping. Kedric’s attempts to be chaste until it was gone have failed spectacularly, but at least the exertion hasn’t seemed to make her any worse. 

“We can build a home. I can sell my services as a doctor, and we can have a little garden or something.” He’s smiling as he speaks, imagining this idyllic future. His hand follows the curve of her side, her hip, before drifting to nestle his fingers in his favorite place. “I’ll bandage up the locals, and cure their colds. You can read all the books you want, or play sentry, or I can teach you medicine.”

Tamzin hums, a noise that shifts from thoughtfulness to approval as he slips two fingers into her. She lifts her leg to his drape across his own thigh, though not without a soft huff of inconvenience. 

“I’ll come inside after a long day of work,” Kedric continues, slowly moving his fingers in and out, taking his time to draw out the sensation. “You’ll put down your book, and I’ll take you to bed...” 

“I’m not a housewife,” she murmurs. She shifts her hips into his hand, sighing as he dutifully begins to work her clit with his thumb. “I’m a soldier.”

“You’ll put down your gun, then.” She can hear the smile in his voice, the satisfaction of seeing her so comfortable pairing well with his delight as he builds her up.. “And I’ll fuck you in the kitchen until they can hear you say my name on Io.” 

“Mm.” Tamzin can’t think of a particularly good retort at this precise moment. “... Maybe.” 

Kedric leans forward to kiss her as he adds a third finger. Tamzin lets him draw her closer, and for a moment she can imagine a thousand mornings like this, an eternity of mornings with him beside her. 

She wants that eternity. For some reason, the realization frightens her. 

“We’ll figure it out,” Kedric reassures her, mistaking her sudden tension for distaste. “We’ll talk about it later.” 

“... Okay.” 

It’s not so hard to ease find that ease again, thankfully. Kedric withdraws, despite her soft grumble of disappointment. He takes advantage of her parted lips and she feels his sticky, slick thump against her lip, her teeth, his fingers resting lightly on her cheek. She licks her own wetness from his skin, sucking for the pleasure of his hitched breath, unable to suppress a smirk when he shifts uncomfortably. 

“Something wrong?” 

Tamzin doesn’t have to open her eyes to know he’s hard again. She enjoys the way he kisses her first, though, touches her like he’s worshipping at some broken altar. She’s come to realize that he chases her pleasure before his own, derives his own satisfaction from her bliss. 

“I love you,” he says. The words are so earnest that he sounds like he’s in pain, his grip on her tightening as if she might drift away. “I hope you know that, Tamzin.” 

Her teasing mood softens, and she finally opens her eyes. He’s studying her the way he does when she feels he’s trying to commit every bit of her essence to memory. 

“I do.” She brings her hand to his cheek, stroking his light-kissed skin. “Even if I don’t understand it, I know it.” 

Her kiss is soft, sweet. He seems mildly surprised by the gesture, but she doesn’t linger long. 

“I love you, too.” 

The words shouldn’t feel as strange as they do. Perhaps she hasn’t said them enough before now, if at all. His face transforms as she does, though, some transcendent joy that she’s never witnessed before. 

It makes her want to say it again. 

“I love you,” she repeats. “I think I always will.” 

They find one another. They lose themselves.

He bites her neck as she climaxes, his name on her lips, and Tamzin finds her doubts have vanished like so much ash in the wind. 


	58. Chapter 58

“Patrol is out of range,” the Hunter hisses into the radio. 

Gaelen flinches. Even in his ear, her voice seems too sharp in the dead silence of the ruins. 

If he had a heart, it would be pounding in terror. Instead, his processors are chugging along, synthesizing the sort of abject fear that would certainly paralyze a biological man. 

“Do you copy?” He feels a stab of empathy. The Hunter sounds just as frightened as he is. “Get moving.” 

“Roger,” Gaelen finally replies. “Moving out.” 

He forces himself to ease his grip on his rifle, starting the quick and quiet crawl over the crest of the rubble hills. He can hear the fall of debris as several other civilians and Guardians follow, spread out. 

_ Careful. _ His Ghost is just as edgy as he is.  _ They aren’t on schedule. _

“I know,” he replies. “Just listen and stay out of sight.”

A beam of light sweeps just behind them, glaring against the debris they’ve just crawled beyond. A young Warlock to Gaelen’s right makes a muffled noise of panic, freezing in place. 

“Hey.” Gaelen speaks into his radio, voice low. “Hey. Kid. Keep moving. Come on.” 

The kid won’t move, though. He’s staring up at the wall, at the source of the searchlight, body trembling like a leaf in the wind. 

“Move,” Gaelen hisses again. “Forward. They’ll sweep back soon and catch you.” 

_ Keep going, _ Gaelen’s Ghost orders.  _ Don’t stay in one spot too. _

The beam sweeps back along the length of the wall, this time a bit closer. Gaelen can see the circle of light approaching, nipping the heels of the approaching insurgents, on a collision course with the frozen Warlock. 

_ Don’t do it.  _ His Ghost pleads.  _ You can still make it. You can go without him. _

He ignores her. He somehow makes it to the Warlock quickly and smoothly at the same time, yanking him out of the light’s path so violently that the movement catches attention from the sentries. 

The light jerks to the spot where the Warlock had been moments before, lingering, and he can hear the faint sounds of Cabal grunts far above as they discuss what they may or may not have just seen. 

The kid’s pinned beneath him, their prone bodies hidden safely in the shadow of a wrecked hull. Gaelen can still feel him trembling. He ought to comfort him, he thinks. He would if it were a civilian. Instead, he finds the boy’s shoulders and shakes him firmly. 

“Get it together,” he snaps, visor pressed to the Warlock’s own. “People are depending on you. If you fuck up, we’re all gonna die with you, and the City will be lost.” 

The kid nods, but his sudden flush of shame makes Gaelen suspect he’s wet himself. He sighs, looking up to try and gauge the path of the searchlight. It’s not moving yet.  

“Keep moving.” The Hunter sounds shaken, breath fast in the mic. “Keep looking straight ahead, and keep moving.” 

He hears the crunch of gravel, distant snorting sounds. 

“Go.” Gaelen forcibly turns the Warlock onto his stomach, shoving him forward. He falls flat on his face before scrambling, crawling, moving as quickly as he can on his hands and his knees. 

“Tell me when you’re clear.” He switches his channel to private, voice low. He hears the Hunter click the radio as if she’ll say something, but then she turns it off again. “They’re coming. I can hold them back, distract them, and you guys can get inside the wall and keep moving.”

She doesn’t answer for a long minute. He can hear the Cabal voices approaching. 

“... You could make it,” she says. “Just run for it.” 

“And let them open fire on all of you?” Gaelen tries to sound more amused than grim, though he doesn’t manage it. “I’ll be fine. Just a diversion.” 

_ It’s suicide, _ his Ghost says.  _ You’re killing yourself. _

The Hunter hasn’t replied yet, and he stays quiet, waiting for her response. 

“If you get yourself killed right before we get the Light back,” she finally replies, voice cracking slightly. “I’m gonna have your Ghost bring you back so I can kill you myself.” 

“You’ll have to let her have a turn first,” he answers. “You just get in there. I’ve got your back.” 

“... Yeah. Roger.” 

He watches the shadows slink closer to the perimeter, a few disappearing into the darkness that marks the edge of the Last City’s ruined walls. 

“I’m not letting them kill me without a fight, Gi.” His Ghost is silent, but he can feel her anxiety, her still terror. “But you know what to do if I don’t make it.” 

She doesn’t answer. He can hear the heavy footsteps of the patrol rounding the bend once more. 

“Tell me.” 

_ I escape, _ she says.  _ I keep going. I find-- another Guardian to take care of. _

“That’s right.” She can hear the smile in his voice. “Promise me.” 

_ I can’t-- _

“You can.” The Cabal are closer now, close enough to make him shrink down small against the metal debris. “Promise.” 

There’s a pause in the approaching footsteps. They hear the soft Cabal grumbles of suspicion as they find something that arouses their suspicion. 

_ … I promise. _

One of the soldiers bellows, a sound not unlike that of cow being slaughtered. The lights along the edge of the wall begin to turn on, blinding beams cascading into the distance. 

Gaelen gets to his feet, gun at the ready.

But it’s not his bullet that takes out the first Legionary. It comes from behind him, and as he turns, he finds the young Warlock, a smoking hand cannon in his only slightly unsteady grip. 

“The fuck are you doing here?” Gaelen asks, unable to hide his shock. 

“They’re all inside,” the Warlock replies. “But you shouldn’t have to do this alone.” 

Those words hurt for some reason, an echo of something Lochlan said to him long ago in the early days of their friendship. It’s a bad time to think of them now. 

“... Okay.” He nods, sensors tuning into the sound of approaching hostiles. “Thanks. Let’s do this.” 

There’s no one to witness their last stand but Gaelen’s Ghost, and she will spend the rest of her days wishing she hadn’t. 

The Cabal bodies pile up as the Guardians fight back to back, barely staggering when they take enemy blows, picking each other up when they fall. When the ammo runs out and the reinforcements begin to mass, the party they came with is long gone, deep inside the City and attacking the infrastructure they came for. 

The Warlock’s fallen once more. This time, he won’t be getting back up. 

Gaelen drops to his knees beside him, bringing his head into his lap, helping him take off his helmet to put a gloved hand on his cheek. 

“Sorry,” the kid says. There’s blood on his lips, running out his nose. “I fucked up.” 

“Hey. None of that.” Gaelen wipes some of the blood away, brushing his hair from his face. “You were amazing. We held them off, kid. They made it. They’re gonna make it.” 

The Warlock coughs. The sound is horrible, the inhale that follows a visceral rattling noise in his chest. 

“Not soon enough for me, though, huh.” 

It’s not a question. 

_ I can’t fix that, _ Gi quietly tells Gaelen.  _ His organs are shredded. _

“You can rest, kid.” Gaelen keeps stroking the Warlock’s hair, flaxen wisps that would look good freshly washed. “Close your eyes and rest a bit until they get the Traveler back, alright?” 

He can’t reply, though. He’s bleeding out, each breathe wetter, more shallow than the last. 

_ They’re coming. _

Gaelen doesn’t move. He holds the Warlock until he hears the death rattle, until the last breath leaves his body and he can’t feel alone or afraid anymore. 

“Get out of here, Gi.” Gaelen doesn’t get to his feet. He just stays there, kneeling, still holding the Warlock’s body. “You don’t have to see this.” 

“Gaelen--” 

“Now.” He says it so firmly that she materializes, recoiling in the face of his cold fury. “You promised.” 

“... I love you,” she says, even as she starts moving away. “I love you, Gaelen. Please don’t do this.” 

“I love you, too, Gi.” He tilts his head back, a sacrificial animal baring its throat to the approaching butchers. “Don’t forget me. Don’t forget Lochlan.” 

She turns and flies like the Darkness itself is after her. She flies so hard and fast she fears she’ll break the sound barrier, but it’s still not fast enough.

Gi hears the crunch of a blade going through metal. She turns, hesitating, ready to go back, but she sees the headless body of her Guardian slumping forward already, sparks flickering from the stump of his neck. 

For a moment, she feels what he feels: A sense of relief, like a long-held breath being released into the cool mountain air. 

 

_ I thought you’d never show up, _ Lochlan laughs.  _ You always did like to keep me waiting. _

 

And then, just like that breath, he’s gone. 


	59. Chapter 59

Tamzin’s body aches. 

It’s a constant state, really, and while it’s a marked improvement on her progression from agony to mild discomfort, she’s not sure she’ll ever be truly  _ used _ to it. 

She misses Rho. She misses pain being a fleeting, temporary thing. 

“What are you thinking about?” 

Kedric rolls onto his side, kissing her lightly on the shoulder as he drapes an arm over her and draws her close. He feels her little flinch of pain. Frowns, then scoots closer so she doesn’t have to move. 

“Sorry.” Another kiss, this one apologetic. “I can get something for the soreness.” 

“... Yeah.” Tamzin sighs, closing her eyes. “I was hoping it would go away.” 

The Awoken exhales as he sits up, something that might be a huff or a sigh of impatience. He keeps talking as he moves across the cabin, reaching for a panel to dig through his medicines. 

“You don’t need to suffer if you’re uncomfortable,” he reminds her. Even if he’s said it dozens of times, Kedric doesn’t seem to mind repeating himself. “It takes a while to build up a pain tolerance. Besides, if you’re in pain, you won’t be moving around, so your muscles will stay tight and cause even  _ more _ discomfort.” 

“So you’ve said.” She rolls her eyes, tugging the blankets up to her chin. “It just feels… stupid.” 

“Here.” Kedric turns, tossing something toward the bed. “Two of--” 

For a long, horrible moment, Tamzin thinks she’s having another seizure. The ship staggers, systems flickering as if they’ve been hit by some sort of EMP. Tamzin brings her hands to her ears, still-tender eardrums making her cry out in pain as the pressure drops, the crash of bottles and unsecured miscellany tumbling against the walls and floor muffled and distant. 

Kedric is with her before it’s over, somehow. He’s holding her, bracing a hand against the hull to make sure she doesn’t get hurled off the bed. 

“What the fuck,” he pants, breathless in shock and fear. “What the fuck was that?” 

Something is rattling around in one of the compartments. He tightens his grip on Tamzin, defensive, but she’s staring at her hands. They look the same, of course, it’s silly to think they’d look  _ different, _ though she can feel her blood burning with something so familiar and so powerful that she half expects to see them glowing through her skin. 

“I appreciate the padding, but a  _ cabinet? _ How undignified.” The Ghost appears in a shower of glowing particulates, shaking her shell like a dog might shake off water. “I see you managed to keep your promise.” 

Kedric looks pale, if that’s possible, his cheeks dulling from sky blue to a shade of washed out periwinkle. 

“You’re awake,” he says. 

“Rho!” Tamzin says at the same time, suddenly overwhelmed with disbelief and shock and relief at the sight and sound of her Ghost. “Rho, you’re okay!” 

“I see you found someone just as eloquent as you are,” Rho replies, looking between the two with a judgmental air before floating over to her Guardian. “Are you two nudists, then, or have you finally managed to form an emotional attachment with someone? 

Kedric laughs, a short bark that only breaks some of the strange tension in the room. Tamzin puts a hand on his thigh, trying to be reassuring, though her head’s still spinning. 

“This is Kedric,” she supplies. “He fixed me.” 

“Is that all?” Rho sounds faintly amused. “He did a good job, I’ll give him that.” 

“He’s my…” Tamzin trails off, trying to find the right words. Rho just continues scanning her, making thoughtful noises. “He’s mine. I love him.” 

“That’s nice. Pleasure to meet you, and all of that.” Rho doesn’t seem too bothered when Kedric leans down to kiss Tamzin, simply rotating to examine another angle. “Is there anything you  _ didn’t  _ break? I’m almost scared to check your head.” 

Kedric grimaces, making Tamzin smile nervously in return. 

“I have the data in the ship’s systems,” he informs the Ghost. “If you want the comprehensive records.” 

“I don’t need records.” Rho sounds annoyed, her scan lingering on Tamzin’s skull for a long time. Her Guardian closes her eyes, resting her head against Kedric’s shoulder as the Ghost carries on. “Skull fractures?” 

“Extensive trauma,” he replies. The way his hand strokes Tamzin’s hair is a harsh contrast to the clinical tone he’s shifted to. “She had seizures at first. Otherwise…” 

“It’s fine.” Tamzin sighs. This medical talk is making her feel self-conscious. “She can fix it. Right?” 

Rho doesn’t answer. The little twist of her shell could be hesitation, or just a nervous tic. 

Tamzin doesn’t like either option. 

“...  _ Right? _ ” 

“It might… self-correct once you resurrect,” the Ghost finally admits. She’s not scanning anymore, apparently having all the information she wanted. “But I can’t reverse the damage.” 

“What damage? I’m better.” 

“You bashed in nearly half your brain,” the Ghost retorts. “The only reason you aren’t dead is because I did a patch job.” 

“I’m  _ better _ ,” she repeats. “I am. Kedric, tell her.” 

“She seems fine,” he hedges. “The seizures are infrequent. Her emotions and inhibitions aren’t erratic, her motor function is almost perfect...” 

“How often is she having the seizures?” 

“I’m not,” Tamzin interjects. 

“Well, without monitors--” Kedric frowns thoughtfully. “Once a week, I’d guess.” 

“I’m not!” Tamzin says it louder, since it seems they can’t hear her. “I’m not having seizures.” 

“Darling,” Kedric says, catching her face in his hands so he can look into her eyes. “Lovely. It’s not a problem, I promise. They’re just little ones. You don’t even realize they’re happening.” 

“It’s a big deal if they keep happening after I’ve gotten my Light back!” She retorts. Her voice is too loud, too high pitched, but she can’t help it. “It’s a big deal if I’ve somehow done something my Ghost can’t fix!” 

“I’m going back into the cabinet if you’re going to be hysterical.” Rho does not sound impressed. “Sit still, stop screaming, and I’ll fix you up as well as I can.” 

“I’m not hysterical.” Tamzin snaps the words at the same time Kedric says, “She’s just scared.” 

“Either way.” Rho sounds quite tired of them, but she drifts down to Tamzin’s arm, scanning the cast and making a noise of sympathy. “The sooner I finish, the sooner we can head home.” 

Tamzin flinches, feeling Kedric stiffen beside her. She isn’t sure if he’s angry or… or what? 

He tightens his arms around her, and she hears his breath catch in his throat. 

“I’m not going back,” Tamzin replies, unable to keep her voice steady. 

Her Ghost freezes, shell snapping tight in displeasure. 

Kedric begins to relax. She feels his exhale of relief, a sigh quickly aborted when she speaks again. 

“Not yet.” 


End file.
